The Long Way Home
by Roadie-N60
Summary: It's said that criminals aren't born; society creates them. This is especially true of Helena G. Wells.
1. The Chronic Argonauts

**The story of H.G. Wells, before and after the bronze. It will be canon-compliant through the end of season 4 (with liberties taken for the Victorian timeline because that's not even canon-compliant with itself) and then jossed all to hell by season 5, because in my universes HG always gets Myka. Yes, she will in this one, too, but it'll take awhile to get there. **

**This one's for hermitstull.  
**

* * *

_I got it making flowers grow in hearts of stone_

_I got it 'cause I always took the long way home._

/

It's Sunday afternoon, and a young man is standing in the entryway of the Bethlem Hospital.

The trip from his flat in South Kensington to the hospital in Southwark has taken him a half-day by horse-tram and Hansom cab.

"Can I help you, sir?" asks the nurse behind the glass.

The man nervously smooths his hair into place with one hand, and lifts his satchel higher on his shoulder with the other. He steps closer to the counter.

"Yes, please. I'm here to—to see, to visit, ah, uhm, I do believe that my… my…" He trails off.

The nurse tilts her head to the side and smiles, not unkindly. "Your…?"

"My sister," he says, looking down. "I believe she has, er, been given residence here."

The man swallows and shifts his satchel again. It's full of things he knows she likes. A small chess set (his chess set, which he never uses; never cared for the game). A needlepoint cushion, embroidered by their mother with an image of a rabbit and a flower. A crisp red apple. And books—three of them, physics and biology texts and journals from his previous term's courses at the university.

The nurse opens the patient registry on the desk in front of her. "Your sister's name, please, sir?"

/

Fifteen minutes later, the man is following a different nurse through long, grey corridors. He holds an apple in one hand and a needlepoint cushion in the other.

"Is she your younger sister, then?" the nurse asks.

Charles chuckles nervously. "Only by about ten minutes," he says.

"You're twins?" the nurse glances back over her shoulder at him. "How unusual!"

"Indeed," Charles shrugs.

Eventually, the nurse turns a corner and leads him through a doorway into a sprawling, manicured garden. Men and women in simple, grey clothing walk slowly along garden paths, accompanied by nurses. Charles spots one man near the far hedge, conversing vigorously with an invisible companion; another runs his hand shamelessly over his own body, seemingly unaware of the company around him. Two women grasp hands and jump up and down, shrieking and giggling like schoolchildren.

"Is my sister quite safe here, with all of these… people…" he waves his hand vaguely toward the yard.

"Oh yes, sir," the nurse says. She points to a large man in a dark uniform who strolls through the yard alone. "We have several guards who supervise the patients during their time out-of-doors. They intervene at the slightest hint of anything untoward. Now, as for your sister…"

"There," he says, pointing. "By that flowerbed, kneeling down."

"There she is indeed, sir."

He wants to run across the garden to her, but propriety indicates that he must follow the nurse. And since lack of propriety is probably the reason they've found themselves in this mess… well. He won't have the doctor thinking it runs in the family.

So he follows the nurse down the path to the garden bed where his sister kneels, puzzling intently over a rose blossom, plucked and held up to the light. Her head cocks a little to the side.

"It's fascinating," she says, without looking up, as they approach. "I never noticed that the flowers of roses have both stamen and pistil. I wonder if that means they can pollinate themselves? Surely this has been researched. If you could help me gain access to the appropriate publications…"

For the first time all day, the man feels able to exhale fully.

"Helena," he says.

Her head snaps up and to the side, and as soon as she lays eyes on him she smiles broadly and stands.

"Charles," she says, pulling him into a warm hug. "I'm sorry, I thought you were a nurse."

As Helena steps back, Charles' chaperone reaches for her hand and gently unwraps it from the stem of the rose she had plucked.

"Now, now, Miss Wells," she says, "We mustn't pick the flowers. We must leave them for everyone to enjoy. And these have thorns that are quite prickly, we wouldn't want to scratch ourselves!"

Charles watches the moment of shine fade from Helena's eyes. "Indeed we wouldn't," she says.

/

After the nurse has excused herself, Charles and Helena stroll slowly through the yard. No sooner has Charles handed Helena the apple than she bites into it, the juice running down her fingers.

"The food here is terrible," she says. "Tough meat and soggy vegetables."

"How long must you stay, Helena?" Charles asks.

Helena shrugs. "Until they consider me cured, I suppose."

"Cured… cured of what? Who on earth would be mad enough to think you belonged in bloody _Bedlam_?"

Helena pauses, waits for her brother to turn and face her.

"Do you know what's become of Tina?" she asks quietly, almost timidly.

Charles furrows his eyebrows. "Tina? You mean Christina Taylor?" he asks.

Helena nods.

Charles tips his head to the side. "Funny you should ask," he says. "In the same letter where Papa told me you were here, he told me that the Taylors have made plans to move to Manchester, to live with Mrs. Taylor's brother."

Helena's eyes are fixed on the grass. When she looks up again, her eyes are wet, glistening, tears threatening to fall. She sniffs.

"Helena," Charles says. Gently, he grips her shoulder and guides her to a nearby bench. "What's the matter?"

"Goodness, I'm sorry, Charles, but have you a handkerchief? We aren't permitted to carry them in here."

He pats around his jacket until he finds it and hands it to her; she dabs at her nose and the corners of her eyes. "Thank you."

"What's wrong, Helena?" Charles asks, again.

She glances up at him, then looks back down at where she's wringing his handkerchief in her lap. "Papa didn't tell you, then."

"I… apparently not? Tell me what?"

"Tina and me, we were… caught. By her father."

"Caught?"

"Caught. In her bedroom. Together."

Charles blinks once. Twice. Then his head falls forward into his upturned hands, elbows resting on his knees.

"Oh, Helena," he says. "You didn't."

"I didn't what?" she asks loudly, defensively, before catching herself and glancing around furtively. She leans forward and continues in a harsh whisper: "I didn't fall in love with a wonderful girl? I didn't kiss her? I didn't wish, desperately, that I might have been a man, that I could marry her and work every day to give her the life she deserved? Because I did all of those things, and for the life of me, brother, I can't determine why any of it was wrong."

But Charles is shaking his head, and finally he lifts it from his hands and looks at her. "You were caught," he says. "I wish you hadn't gotten caught."

Helena sits up straighter; sighs. She clutches her mother's cushion to her chest. "Me, too," she says.

/

Charles returns to the doctor's office to pick up his satchel on his way out of the hospital.

"I'm glad you've come to visit," Dr. Austin says. "Women with Helena's condition benefit from the presence of strong male figures in their lives."

Charles nods. "I'll come again, sir. As often as I can make the trip."

"Good, good. I'm terribly sorry I couldn't let you bring her those gifts. It's imperative that Helena's focus and energy be diverted to calming, feminine pastimes. Excessive attention to masculine intellectual and scholarly activities is almost undoubtedly part of the reason why she developed her, eh, deviancy."

Charles bites the inside of his cheek. "Yes, sir," he says, as he hoists the bag to his shoulder, still heavy with the weight of the books and the chess set.

"Items like the embroidered cushion are perfect. They will remind her of the security of the home, and the influence of a maternal figure."

"Yes, sir," Charles repeats, and then excuses himself from the office before the rage can drive him to pierce his own skin with his teeth.

/

"She threw a bit of a tantrum last evening," the nurse says, as she leads him through the corridors a fortnight later. "We've given her a sedative. Nothing too serious; Dr. Austin prescribed a light opiate. So if she seems somewhat… unlike herself? That's why."

Distantly, Charles hears a cry; a hoarse, masculine voice.

"Here we are, then," the nurse says. "She's in the common room this afternoon."

Helena sits in a rocking chair near the corner. Behind her, the window overlooks the palatial gardens, empty now in the grey and the drizzle. She rocks slowly, pushing with her toes against the tile, gaze fixed somewhere on the floor.

Charles thanks the nurse, then picks up a chair from an unoccupied card table and places it opposite Helena. Helena jumps a little when the wood clacks loudly against the tile, and then looks up and watches him as he sits.

"Charles," she says. Her eyebrows come together as though she's just remembered something, and her lips pull slowly outward across her cheeks. It looks vaguely like a smile, Charles thinks. Like she's trying to smile for him. "How marvelous to see you," she says.

"Yes, Helena." He swallows and glances to the side, and back again. "It's lovely to see you too. I, er…" He reaches into the pocket of his jacket. "I brought you another apple," he says. It's a green one, a little bruised from the journey but still shiny. He holds it out to her and she eyes it warily for a moment.

"Here," Charles says. He reaches over, picks up her hand where it rests on her lap, and presses the apple to her palm. After a moment's hesitation, she wraps her fingers around it.

"Thank you, Charles," she says. "You're so kind to me." She contemplates the shine on the green skin for a moment, and then slowly, almost as an afterthought, brings it to her lips.

Charles leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. "I have some news, Helena. I thought you might like to hear it."

All of Helena's movements are slow, Charles realizes, as though she's pressing through water. Like a drifting boat, she turns to face him. "What is it?"

"Do you remember when I was home for Christmas, that night we stayed up late talking by the hearth?" Charles asks. Helena's face is not responsive. She takes another bite of her apple.

Charles looks at her with what he hopes is an eager expression. "You were blathering on, as you do, about—a connection between time and space? Some kind of… continuum? Am I remembering that correctly?"

Helena glances heavenward, recollecting, as she chews and swallows. She tilts her head to the side. "I do remember that conversation," she says. "You were bored with it, until I managed to reframe my theories into a story of sorts. A narrative. And then, of course, you were suddenly rapt."

"It was a marvelous story, Helena! I'd never heard the likes of it. Travelling in time! And, well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

Charles pulls a folded magazine from the inside pocket of his jacket. He hands it to Helena, who accepts it without reaction.

"Look at the cover, Helena."

She unfolds it with one hand, the other carefully holding her apple core, and her eyes move slowly down the page, until—

"But Charles, I didn't write this." Her fingers linger over the headline near the bottom of the page.

_Short Fiction: __The Chronic Argonauts__, by H.G. Wells._

"It's your story, Helena," Charles says. "I was merely the scribe."

Slowly, Helena opens the magazine and turns the pages one at a time until she finds it. Charles watches her eyes, watches the pupils dilate and then narrow, watches her gaze skip haphazardly about the page.

"May I keep this?" she asks, finally. "I'm afraid I can't… I can't seem to focus on the words right now, but perhaps tomorrow...?"

Charles thinks of Dr. Austin, and says, "I don't think that's a good idea."

Helena closes the magazine and holds it out to him. "Perhaps you're right."

Charles takes the magazine before he can think consciously about his actions, and rolls it nervously between his hands. Helena's forearms have come to rest on the arms of the chair, hands dangling limp from the wrist, an apple core held loosely between her fingers.

"I would love to hear about your studies," Helena says, quietly. " I have so many questions. But I can't think of any of them, right now. I find myself so very… tired."

Charles makes a decision, and opens the magazine on his lap. "Shall I read the story to you?"

She turns her head, slides her gaze into his, and for a moment, just for a flash, he can see _Helena_ looking out at him, through the haze of the sedative. "That would be wonderful. Thank you."

Charles sits up straighter and takes a breath. "_About half-a-mile outside the village of Llyddwdd by the road that goes up over the eastern flank of the mountain called Pen-y-pwll to Rwstog is a large farm-building known as the Manse.…_"

* * *

H.G. Wells sits tall and stiff in the back seat of the car, a blanket wrapped around her head.

She looks like some kind of Bedouin rider bundled against a sandstorm, James thinks.

"You can lie down across the bench, if you like," he says. "It's perfectly safe."

She doesn't move.

"My name is James," he says. "James McPherson. I'm hoping we can become great associates."

She doesn't respond.

He gives up on talking; it won't do to have her becoming frustrated with him at this early stage of their partnership. As he turns onto the interstate he switches on the radio, fiddles with the knob until he finds a classical station. He recognizes the aria; it's from Tosca.

A few seconds later, something moves in his rear-view mirror. He glances back to see Wells shifting, leaning over to rest against the doorframe.

_Progress_, he thinks.

There's a brief stretch along the drive where they pull out of range of that classical station and are not in range of another; he fiddles with the dial again and finds news. A mortar shell has erupted in the Afghan village of Sangin, killing fifty residents, including many children.

He shakes his head. "Do you hear this?" he asks, tentatively. "Destroying itself, humanity is. But together, we'll acquire the means to stop it. And we'll make ourselves rich in the process."

Behind him, H.G. Wells doesn't move.

As they drive closer to Minneapolis, McPherson fiddles with the dial again and finds another classical station. In the rearview, Wells sags deeper against the door as the melancholy strains of _O Sole Mio_ fill the car in Pavarotti's rich tenor.

Their journey ends, finally, at a low-rent motel near the airport at Minneapolis-St. Paul. James turns off the car and lets it settle, for a moment, into silence.

"Wait here," he says. "I'll go and check us in, and then I'll come and fetch you."

She doesn't respond. He has stopped expecting that she might.

When he returns from the check-in desk, he starts the car again and drives it around the side of the building to a parking spot near the external stairway closest to their room.

"You'll want to sit up now," he says, "or you'll fall when I open the door."

In the first evidence that she's listening to him, and that she can respond, she sits up straighter. McPherson retrieves his overnight bag from the trunk. When he opens Wells's door, he does so slowly, one arm extended to catch her if she falls. She doesn't, though, so he reaches forward until he can touch her shoulder.

"Please forgive my familiarity," he says; "I imagine it's awfully untoward, by the standards you're used to. But I hope you can tolerate it awhile longer, since we have to keep your eyes protected from the light until tomorrow."

She does not respond, but she does follow his hand as he guides her slowly out of the vehicle. He leads her up the steps with an arm around the shoulders, and then guides her to the battered chair near the desk in the room.

With the door closed, the sliver of light coming through the blinds from the open-air walkway outside is all that illuminates the space.

"I'm going to uncover your head," he says. "I think it's dark enough for your eyes, but keep them closed, just to be safe."

He doesn't expect an answer, so he finds the edge of the blanket and begins to lift.

She is, he's surprised to note, quite beautiful. Extraordinarily so, in fact. He saw her bronzed form, of course, but somehow it didn't capture the height of her cheekbones, the angle of her jaw. Or, of course, her complexion: black hair, fair skin, the opposite of his wife but so differently stunning. Her hair is knotted into a chignon, and he thinks he would have been a happier man living in Victorian England if all women wore such beautifully tailored attire.

He shakes his head. She's likely young enough to be his daughter. _By some measures of age, at least. _He laughs inwardly. Still, he would do well enough to remember that_._

"All right," he says. "Let's have a go at opening your eyes."

He sees her take a deep breath, her lips coming to rest slightly apart, and then slowly she raises her lids. She blinks once, twice, and dark, expressionless eyes slide up toward his face.

"Hello, Miss Wells," he says. "Welcome to the year 2010."

/

He instructs her on the use of the toilet and the faucets, and then hands her a bag of clothing he had Leena order based on measurements she took of Helena's bronzed form.

"These are for relaxation and sleeping," he says, pulling a t-shirt and a pair of long cotton trousers from the bag.

She emerges from the bathroom with her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders, her leather shoes peeking out from beneath the pyjama pants.

_Oh, hell,_ MacPherson thinks, _of course I forgot to have her order shoes._

"There we are," he says. "You must surely be more comfortable like that."

Wells tugs the blanket tighter around her shoulders, pulling it together at her throat as a modest woman might clutch at the neckline of her shirt. For a moment, her mouth opens and closes, like a fish's.

"I'm quite hungry," she says, finally, her voice raspy from disuse. She swallows. "How does one go about acquiring food in 2010?"

MacPherson smiles broadly. "I'm famished myself. Come, there's an extensive assortment of delivery menus here. I'm sure we can find something to suit your nineteenth-century palate."

They order sandwiches from an Italian deli and James unwraps them on the room's small table. H.G. picks hers up and eyes it for a moment, the mayonnaise seeping out along a leaf of lettuce, and then takes a cautious bite from one corner. She chews once, twice, carefully, as though he's asked her to take a bite of an insect instead of a meal, but as she swallows he sees her eyes flutter upward in a moment of orgiastic pleasure. She takes another, much larger bite and sets the sandwich back down on the paper and then extends her hands before her, flexing and fisting them, watching them move.

"This is real," she breathes after swallowing, almost too soft to hear.

"Pardon me?"

"I'm truly here," she says, louder this time. She looks up and meets his eyes in the shadows. "I'm truly free of the bronze."

MacPherson's eyebrows come together. "Well, yes?"

"Forgive me." H.G. watches her hands open and close once more. "After so many years—goodness, a _century_—in one's own mind, occupied by nothing but one's own thoughts and hallucinations, it becomes difficult to trust one's senses."

"I know," MacPherson says. "I was bronzed, too. Not as long as you were, but…" he shrugs and takes another bite of his dinner. Sure, he was bronzed for a scarce few minutes, but there's nothing wrong with a little lie by omission in the interest of a greater good. He's making her feel she has a friend in this new century. That's all it is.

H.G. eyes him sidelong from under knit brows. "You're not a regent, then."

MacPherson inhales sharply to laugh and promptly chokes on his food; H.G. eyes him impassively as he coughs and sputters.

"No," he says finally, "I am most certainly not a regent. Those old fools would have left you to rot another five centuries, I'm sure."

"You've freed me illicitly," she says. When he nods, she continues: "Have you done it, then? Have you found a way to reverse death?"

He does not know why she asks the question but it's clearly very important; something in her eyes is frantic, her pupils wide and the vein in her neck pounding wildly, her fist clenched so tightly her fingernails must be gouging into her palm.

"No," he says quietly. "I'm sorry. We haven't."

H.G.'s white-knuckled fist loosens and she looks down, but not fast enough to guard him from the fleeting look of despair.

"Why am I here, then?" she asks.

MacPherson swallows the remains of his sandwich and notices she has still only taken two bites of hers. "Please, enjoy your supper, and I'll tell you the whole story," he says.

Obligingly she lifts the sandwich to her lips and takes a bite. MacPherson leans back in his chair and begins to talk about the profits they could share if they could find and sell the Minoan Trident.

"I know you found a piece of it during your tenure at Warehouse 12," he says, "but it's never been shelved. I searched in your house in London—we're in America now, by the way—and never found it, so I thought I'd simply come straight to the source. And then, by our considerable combined wit, we can track down the remainder of the artifact and make ourselves very, very rich."

When MacPherson meets her eyes again, they are dark, her countenance stern. She chews slowly.

"We shall have to return to London, first," she says, "but not for the trident. There's something else I'll need." The fingernails of one hand scrape slowly across the skin of the base of her throat.

MacPherson grins. "Fortunately, my dear, I've already booked us on a flight tomorrow."

H.G.'s eyes widen. "A _flight_?"

MacPherson nods. "You have much to learn, and I'll do my best to teach you before we touch down at Heathrow. Just follow my lead."

H.G. is grinning now and she shakes her head, incredulous. "Flying machines," she said. "Tesla finally did it."

"I'm afraid it wasn't Tesla, my dear, but a pair of American brothers…"

Later that night, as he lays in one bed and hears H.G. breathing deeply in the other, he resolves to take great care around the woman and to eliminate her as soon as her usefulness has expired.

There's something off, something terribly _sinister_, about her, and he has no desire to find out the hard way what it is.

/

Myka and Pete have a short hop to Philadelphia before the transatlantic flight into Gatwick. Myka's tired—exhausted, really—after the insanity of the past few days, but she resolves to stay awake on the first leg of the flight so that she can sleep through the second.

To her right, Pete has his headphones plugged in and is watching the in-flight broadcast of _Two and a Half Men_.

Myka reaches into her bag and pulls out a book. The Warehouse's copy of this particular text was a hard-back, so she's thankful that she had her own paperback to carry, instead. What better way to try to work her way into the mind of H.G. Wells than to reread some of his fiction?

She settles back in her seat and peels back the well-worn cover. When all else fails, start at the beginning, and the beginning, in this case, is Wells's first published story, _The Chronic Argonauts._

_Eyes and ears open, Slim,_ she thinks, as she begins to read: "_About half-a-mile outside the village of Llyddwdd by the road that goes up over the eastern flank of the mountain called Pen-y-pwll to Rwstog is a large farm-building known as the Manse.…"_


	2. Desperate Times

**Trying to tell the story of how "joie-de-vivre" HG turned into "end-the-world" HG involves some trips to some dark places. So, um, TW in this chapter for bad things happening in Victorian mental hospitals. But hey, there's Pete/Myka banter later on to lighten the mood.**

* * *

It's past dark when Charles returns to his flat in South Kensington. His landlady has left a tray of food outside his door; it's cold when he picks it up but, famished, he eats it anyway, perched at his small table. Mutton, potatoes, cabbage.

On his desk, where he left them, lie the neatly-stacked articles his tutor has asked him to read for tomorrow. He rolls his neck once, feeling the joints pop and crack, and then hunches down over the first of the stack, candle pulled close.

Seconds pass by. Then minutes. He realizes he hasn't even processed the title of the paper. The soft creak of the rocking chair against the hospital floor echoes between his ears. Helena's eyes, dull and vapid, staring through the floor near her feet while he read her own story, in his words, back to her.

He remembers her eyes when they were children. When they were ten years old, when Helena had attempted to teach him to skip stones across the water of the river near their Essex home. Her stones shuttled across the surface like water-bugs, frightening the gulls roosting on the far side, while his dropped immediately to the bottom with a loud (if remarkably satisfying) _plonk_.

"You're choosing good rocks but you must set them spinning, Charlie," she'd said, laughing. "It's the spin that keeps it from breaking the surface of the water."

_Of course_, he thinks. _Of course she knew at ten years old what surface tension was_.

A few minutes later, she'd invited him to visit old man Suzuki with her. He was teaching her to fight in some special way they'd developed over in Japan or China or whichever Oriental country the man was from (Helena would natter on about the differences between all those countries, but damned if he could keep it all in his head). Charles had declined; he had never been one for conflict, even in practiced settings. He spent another thirty minutes practicing throwing his stones, and the next day, when he showed Helena how he'd mastered it, she'd clapped her hands and said "Good! Next, we must teach you how to whistle like a proper sailor." She put her fingers between her lips and demonstrated.

Charles is violently jolted from his reverie by the sting of hot wax against the back of his hand; it's his candle, breaching the cup of its holder as it melts. It's gone down by over an inch since he sat down, and he still hasn't turned a single page of his readings.

_Bollocks_, he thinks. _Of all the damned bollocksing bollocksed bollocks. Balls and damn._

He stands, collects his jacket from the hook by the door, and makes his way down the stairs. There's a pub a few blocks down that he's never visited, and this is a night for a pint.

_The Morlock's Arms_ is an unremarkable pub, modern, with its interior stained in dark wood. It's not busy at this late hour, but it's not empty, either. A handful of patrons sit on high stools at the bar, gazing into their pints with varying levels of despair. Charles joins them. He orders a lager and stares into its depths, thankful that the reason _this_ thing can't meet his gaze is because, well, it doesn't have eyes.

"You've the look of a man who's had a day."

Charles glances to the side. The speaker is a man of about his age, sitting three chairs over. He's well put together, hair neatly combed and clothing in good condition, but his face is pale, his eyes marred by dark circles.

"I have indeed, sir, but it seems I could say the same about you," Charles says.

The man laughs and shakes his head. "It's true," he says. "I work for Scotland Yard. The pressure we're under, right now, with that serial killer running about…"

"The Ripper?" Charles asks.

"That's the one," says the man.

It's morbid to think of serial murders as a distraction, but if Charles is perfectly honest with himself, it's hard to imagine that anything less shocking could displace the images in his mind.

"Name's Charles Wells," he says, as he offers a hand to his bar-mate.

The man smiles and accepts the handshake. "William Wolcott," he says, "but my friends call me Wooley."

Charles smiles. "Well, Wooley, I'd be fascinated to hear the Scotland Yard perspective on those murders. There's so much fluff in the papers, it's hard to know what to believe."

/

Valerie Jones has been a nurse at Bethlem Hospital for thirty years. She's seen many changes in that time. She's seen the emphasis on physical restraints decrease, the emphasis on relaxation and more… occupational types of therapies increasing to take their place.

Her attitude about the patients has changed, too. She's an adaptable, progressive woman, she likes to think, open-minded enough to learn new things even at her old age. When she first took the job, she had felt strongly that the patients were there because they were somehow deficient; they were closer to animals than humans, most of the time. But as she's spent more time here, gotten to know more of them, she's realized that most are, simply, ill. Some moreso than others, of course, but they all deserve to be treated with respect.

She keeps this in mind as she works with her girls, shows them how to change the sheets on the dormitory beds, guides them through the process of doing laundry, instructs them on the peeling and chopping of vegetables so they won't cut themselves.

But sometimes, she thinks, sometimes a patient comes along who proves exceptionally difficult to categorize.

Take that Wells woman, there. She folds the corners of the bedsheets in perfect, crisp, 45-degree angles, every time. She peels carrots faster and more efficiently than even Valerie herself does, to the point where Valerie wonders whether she should speak to Dr. Austin about the possibility that the woman may be obsessive-compulsive. Despite that, she is, most often, quiet, and reasonably pleasant, and truly seems to not belong here in Bedlam at all.

And then, out of nowhere, she'll have episodes like the one she's having now, wherein someone will have said something innocuous—in this case, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree"—and she'll begin, softly at first, to talk about how one can _learn_ about why apples don't fall far from trees by studying Newton. Then she'll move on, louder, to say that once one has mastered Newton's theories one can continue to expand one's mind by studying Bernoulli or Lagrange, or by visiting a library and reading the more recent publications and contemporary scholarship. And by now she is agitated, shouting, exclaiming that even the classics, even _Aristotle_, had theories that might have explained why apples never fell far from trees, but nobody here would _know_ that, would they, because nobody has access to _any bloody books_, not even _literature, _let alone _science_, and how on earth is she supposed togrow and heal as a person if she hasn't any tools or materials for _learning_ anything, if _nobody will offer her some kind of intelligent conversation_?

And now a guard is approaching her, now he's got his arms around her to restrain her, and now she's using—as she's used before—a combination of high-precision kicks and strikes to free herself, and now there are three of them, now there are four, and they're restraining her, and now here comes young nurse Sandra with the laudanum, and the guard is pinching Miss Wells's nose so she'll open her mouth, and there now, there, she'll be calm soon.

/

"Charles," Helena says in a cracked whisper, "I need you to help me."

They're strolling in the garden, along one of the carefully-trimmed hedges. Helena has taken his offered apple but this time she isn't eating it. She's holding it, turning it in her palms.

"What kind of help?" Charles asks.

"I'm going to go mad in here," she says. "I wasn't mad when I arrived but I fear I'm…." she crosses her arms in front of her abdomen, holding herself tight. "Between your visits, I might as well be alone. If I try to have a conversation…" she trails off as they cross paths with a guard; Charles notices she ducks her chin, glances up at him through her eyelashes.

"Miss Wells," the guard says, with a brisk nod and a quirk of the lip.

"Mr. Rodney," she replies, nodding back with a tight-lipped, downcast smile. She watches him continue his round before turning back to her brother, her smile vanished, eyes wide.

"Do you see what this place has made of me?" she whispers. "I bat my lashes at the guards, I remember their names and smile coyly at them in the hope of convincing _someone_ that I'm no longer some kind of sexual deviant. But if ever I try to have a conversation with anyone about anything more substantial than the weather they stop me. They tell me not to exert myself, that my _feminine countenance_ will not support it."

Charles sighs, runs his palms over his hair, pulls his thumb and forefinger down the edges of his moustache. "What would you have me do, Helena?"

"Write to Papa for me? You were always his favorite anyway." Her eyes are watering again, and Charles thinks he's seen her cry more often on these visits, within these walls, than in their entire lives before that. "They only way I can, by law, be released from here before the doctor deems me cured is to be released into his custody."

"I can write," Charles answers, "but mightn't it be best if you wrote him yourself?"

"I have." Helena swallows. "Not to ask him to fetch me, of course. The doctor would never send such a thing. I've written him to talk of the kinds of vapid things they permit us to discuss in here."

"And?"

"He's never written back. Nor has mother. I write to both of them."

Their walk takes them past a woman, sitting still and silent on a bench. Younger than him, Charles thinks, with fair hair and a pleasant, round face. Helena bends down a little and touches her shoulder; the woman's eyes slide up to her face. Helena is offering her apple on an outstretched palm. Wordlessly, the woman takes it, brings it to her lips, dispassionately chews, then looks back up at her, the corner of her mouth curling upward, like she learned how to smile by imitating a painting.

"She was pregnant when she arrived here a month ago," Helena says, as they continue their walk. "The baby was born last week and she hasn't laid eyes on it since."

"What's she here for?" Charles asks.

Helena shrugs. "Depressive tendencies associated with hysteria and the wandering womb," she says.

Their walk takes them back to the doorway into the hospital. They pause there; dusk approaches, and they both know that Charles must begin his return to South Kensington.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I'll write to him," he says. "I'll do my best."

/

_Dear Charles,_

_That you have written me on your sister's behalf fills me with pride. I have raised you well, to look out for her, and I am happy to hear that you are visiting her when you can. I can only assume that such support will aid in her recovery._

_I hope I have also raised you well enough to understand why I will not petition for Helena's release, and why I most certainly will not accept custody of her. I assume she has explained what happened, and how she came to be hospitalized. Words cannot express the shame she has wrought upon this family. You know, of course, that Helena was the instigator of the problem; lovely young Tina would never have participated in such degenerate behaviour without your sister's influence. Your mother was ill in bed from the mortification of it for two weeks. She nearly lost her hard-earned position as a lady's maid and still fears what might happen if her friends learn the secret. We are fortunate that the Taylors decided to move, thereby saving us from having to do so; they are wealthier than we, after all, and have family in Manchester who can take them in, while we would have been driven to start from nothing in a new place._

_In full awareness of the severity of my language, hear this, Charles: _

_Helena will stay in that hospital until the doctor deems her cured and releases her on her own merits, or until she rots. I will never again be held responsible for her actions._

_When you have a moment, I do hope you'll write again with updates regarding your studies at university. I've been helping the neighborhood boys to improve their bowls in cricket. It's great fun._

_Your father,_

_Joseph Wells_

/

He tells Helena because he decides it would be more cruel not to. He watches her eyes turn wet and he opens his arms, reaching for her, but she steps back. She looks up, as though she can raise the brim of her lids to hold the tears back.

"I just need a moment, Charles," she says quietly. "Please. If I cry, the nurses will come running with more of that miserable laudanum."

On the way out, Charles stops to speak with Dr. Austin.

"You seem a responsible fellow and I'm certain that you would do your best to provide Miss Wells with the kind of environment her continued recovery requires," the doctor says, "but no, I'm afraid it's a violation of policy and of the law for me to release her into the custody of anyone other than her father or her husband."

That night, at the pub, Charles and Wooley talk about Scotland Yard and public safety over their pints. When he lies in bed later that night, Charles wonders what it says of his character that he's grateful for the distraction a serial killer offers from his concerns about his sister.

/

Dr. Jonathan Austin is the consummate professional. He's practiced psychological medicine for over twenty years, and stays up-to-date on the latest literature and treatments. His wife accuses him, at times, of feeling too much empathy for the wretches whose care he oversees, but it's important, he says, to care for those who cannot care for themselves.

He's packing up for the day, now, having finished his final round of patient checks in the wards and dropped off an updated list of medications and suggested treatments with Nurse Valerie. He's filing his paperwork into his briefcase, looking forward to an evening by the hearth, when—

Who on earth would be knocking now?

"Come in," he says, in a tight, deep tone which, he hopes, conveys both annoyance at being disrupted at the end of his day, and evidence that he's working to contain said annoyance in the interest of civility; he is, after all, polite.

The door opens and closes almost immediately; in the brief gap between, a woman has slipped in, dressed in the patients' drab grey.

"Miss Wells," Jonathan says. "How can I help you? Can I fetch a nurse for you, perhaps?"

"Oh, no, Dr. Austin," she says. Her arms are behind her back, one wrist held in the opposite hand, and she's walking toward him, slowly. Sauntering. "I had hoped to catch you privately."

"Now, Miss Wells. We have rules in place for a reason. They aid in everyone's recuperation." Jonathan clicks his case shut on his desk.

"Oh, I do understand, sir," she says, as she comes to a gentle halt in front of his desk, eyes cast down toward the hard wood. "I simply wished to stop by to thank you for all of your help and support as I've worked to combat my, er, my affliction."

Her eyes are moving now, slowly upward, tracking along the front of his clothing, up toward his face.

"I feel I've made great progress," she says, and her voice has never been quite so low in pitch, before, has it?

She's moving again, now, eyes fixed on his, she's stepping slowly along the edge of his desk, to its side…

"The restful activities, the practices in domesticity," she says in that rough timbre, and it's only after several seconds pass that he realizes he's staring at her lips. "I find myself feeling so very _feminine_, nowadays. It's lovely," she says, and she's behind the desk now, alongside him, and how did he allow that to happen?

"Miss Wells," he says, and coughs. "I'm certainly pleased to hear you feel you're doing so well."

"Oh, you've no idea!" she says softly, smiling, and she does have a lovely smile. She is, in all respects, quite lovely to look at; he'd be blind, a fool, or a sexual invert himself not to notice it. And now her hand is on his sleeve, on his arm, her fingers resting lightly there. He glances up at the door, wills it to open.

Wills it to stay closed.

"I'd no idea what peace I was lacking, before," she's saying, and her fingers are moving now, up the inside of his forearm, and back down again. Up, and down. "How… tormented I was."

"Yes, that's…" the doctor swallows. "That's common for women in your condition." He has a wife. A _wife_. A lovely wife, at home, waiting for him, waiting for his return so that they might eat supper together.

"But I hoped you might help me with something, doctor." Her hand stops its caress, fingers wrapped around his forearm.

"What might that be, Miss Wells?"

"You've proven so reliable, such an admirable man in my life—" she squeezes his arm tighter, in emphasis—"and I've found, as my deviancy has loosened its grip on my psyche, that I simply cannot stop thinking about you."

She has slid her slight body between him and the desk. She has slid her hand over, to the front of his shirt, to the buttons there; she's letting her fingernails catch on the buttons, over and over.

_He has a wife. A wife who has given him two children, a boy and a girl, both healthy and wonderful. _

"That's a common result of these treatments," he says. "We must work to redirect your attention to a more—"

"—suitable candidate?" Miss Wells interrupts, with a coy smile, looking up at him from between fluttering lashes. "I consider myself to be a woman of high standards, Dr. Austin," she says. Her hands are sliding down, now, to his waistband. They're unfastening the button there.

_It was treatment_, he tells himself thirty minutes later, when they've dressed again and they finally leave his office. _She needs to have these emotions reinforced if they're to stabilize. It was an investment in her long-term health._

Miss Wells returns to her ward. Jonathan returns home, to his family.

* * *

Most employees of the Imperial War Museum in London's borough of Southwark know that they share their space with the ghosts of the former patients of the Bethlem Hospital, from before Bethlem was relocated to a new facility in Croydon.

Were any of them to look out the window at exactly the right moment, one day in 2010, they would see a woman in her thirties standing beside the old artillery guns mounted for display outside the front entrance of the museum building that used to be the hospital.

They would see her rest her open hand against the base of one of the guns. They would see her lean on it, and then see her fist close slowly, fingernails grating along the surface, flecks of blue paint scraping free.

They might, if they were to look very, very closely, see the darkness that swamped the woman's eyes like oil across water. More than likely, they would mistake her for some kind of radical—a pacifist, perhaps, infuriated by the presence of a museum that archives and displays the vehicles and weaponry of wars past.

They might be inspired to call museum security, even.

But there would be no need, because the woman stays only a few minutes, and never enters the building. Then she turns and walks back toward the tube station, the set of her jaw firmer than it had been just a few minutes before.

/

James learns very, very quickly that the Warehouse reports and anecdotes of Wells's genius have not been exaggerated.

In the café, where they go for breakfast, she asks for the seat against the wall and spends most of the meal surveying the room. When they walk out, she carries herself differently than when they walked in; a little less stiffly, with a little more… well, for lack of a better word, more swagger.

They stop in a shoe store and she immediately chooses three pairs from the display, and once she's found the right size she asks James to buy them all for her. She walks out in a pair of heeled boots perfectly suited to the thirty-something professional look he's helped her to cultivate.

She shushes him when he attempts conversation at the airport gate. Her eyes cant low, resting unfocused on the floor a yard in front of her feet. She spends much of the flight in the same detached silence, but when she speaks again upon their arrival in London, her accent has slipped out of its Victorian formality, becoming thinner and sharper and substituting the occasional T-sound with a glottal stop.

Only a day out of bronze, and one would have to interact with her for quite some time to notice that she was in any way unusual.

James takes her to her hotel by tube. Once she's checked in, he purchases her a disposable mobile phone and a London A-Z to help her identify the tube stations nearest her destinations; he programs his own number into her phone and shows her how to use it to reach him. Then he insists that she sit down opposite him at the room's small table so that he can debrief her on the Warehouse's current agents.

He opens a file and turns it around so that the text and photographs are right-side-up for H.G. "The Warehouse currently operates the field with a skeletal staff of one supervisor, two agents, and a trainee," James says. "I would prefer it if we could avoid doing any lasting physical harm to the supervisor, Arthur Nielsen, but the others are disposable."

"Do they pose any real threat?" H.G. asks. "I've never been fond of taking life unnecessarily."

James smirks. "Such nobility, coming from the bronze sector."

Her eyes dart up from the files and James feels his smile drop. _If looks could kill_, he thinks, and swallows hard.

"They might," he says. "I believe I've taken care of the young one, Claudia Donovan. She shouldn't be an issue. If you confront any of them, it will be Bering and Lattimer. They're decent agents, but still green. I don't know what they'll know about you. I don't know if they'll recognize you; I don't even know if they know to look for a woman. Lattimer operates on intuition, Bering operates by observation. If you meet them, choose your approach based on which you'll feel most able to confound."

While James watches, a lopsided smile pulls across one of H.G.'s cheeks as she scans the paperwork. "I'm almost disappointed," she murmurs, mostly to herself. "a man's libido is so very easy to confound. I'd hoped for a challenge, my first hop out of the bronze." She closes the folder and tucks it into her bag. "Where and when shall we reconvene, Mr. MacPherson?"

"Your flight back to America departs in two days," he says. "We shall rendez-vous in Rapid City and make our trip to the Warehouse together from there."

"And you'll have the anti-matter," she says, her voice gravelly, one eyebrow cocked at him. "Any arrangement we have will be annulled if you fail to deliver me the means to make the vest work."

"I'll have it," James says. He has no idea what she intends to retrieve from the Escher Vault. He doesn't care, except insofar as she refuses to help him find the Trident until she has collected her possessions from the Warehouse.

"The only things that matter to me in this world are in that vault," she says. Her eyes have lost focus, reaching off into the middle distance. "Until I have them in my possession again, I couldn't possibly focus on any other task."

Again, James is struck by a wave of cold emanating from her like an aura. He paints on a gentlemanly smile and says, "Of course, my dear. You retrieve your vest, I'll obtain the anti-matter, and we'll reconvene in South Dakota."

"South Dakota," H.G. echoes. James watches her hand drift to the base of her throat and curl into a fist.

/

If there's one thing Pete should be used to after working with Myka for a year, it's being made to feel like an idiot.

It's their groove, right? Impulses are his department, and the whole knowing-things thing is hers, and that's why they work, and it's also why they kind of want to kill each other half the time. And it's why he's cool with it when she makes an ass of him—because that's her job. That's what she's there for, is to know stuff he doesn't know, just like he's there to do stuff when she's too busy thinking about it.

Still: he's walking out of H.G. Wells's house with his tail between his legs, no doubt about it, and it's not even Myka that put it there. Yeah, he can take his licks and admit that today has maybe not been his finest, between the thing with the actor and then, you know, the other thing, with the bad guy. Girl. You know.

And the whole thing was just freaky. Like, she was one person, and then snap, she was another person. And sure, maybe sometimes he's got to be hit by a mack truck before he starts being observant but it's weird, how she just flipped it, like a switch. One second she's looking at him all doe-eyed, kissing in a way that makes him want to take a hop back to the 19th century to see if everyone's that good or if it's just her, and then _bam_, her accent's different and she's looking at him like a math problem instead of, you know, a really tasty cheeseburger. And then there was the tesla under his chin. Let's not forget about that. Let's not talk about it, either.

It's just not normal, to be able to switch on and off like that.

Not that there's anything normal that ever came out of the Warehouse. The woman is practically an artifact.

"You should at least take a girl for coffee first next time, Lattimer," Myka is saying, laughing, elbow jabbed into his side as they walk to the corner to hail a cab back to the hotel. He winces: he's got bruises from that fall from the ceiling.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Pete rolls his eyes. "I'll have you know that _she_ was the one who wanted to, uh, skip straight to dessert." He straightens his collar and pops his neck. "Yep, what can I say? I'm irresistible to the ladies."

"Are you, now," Myka says, over her sunglasses.

"Hey man, if you don't feel it, that says more about you than it does about me. Just saying."

/

Myka feels something, all right.

She's kind of embarrassed by it. There are things she should have noticed. The handwriting that had put Edward Prendick's name in the guest log was, in retrospect, so obviously a woman's, and had the Warehouse not taught her _anything_ about what happens when you make assumptions?

_What an ass she made out of you and me, Pete_, she thinks.

Pete's the one who thinks to grab Tubman's thimble from Artie's office before they head to the Escher vault.

"I've got an idea," he says mid-zipline, with that slightly choked tone that indicates he knows she won't like it.

"Pete," she says. "What is it."

He waits until they've landed before he starts to explain, but he only gets halfway through before she stops him.

"Seriously? Why can't _you_ wear the thimble? Just because I'm a woman, I have to be the one to bat my eyelashes at our smarmy super-villain of the week? I'm a _lousy_ flirt, you know."

"Trust me," Pete says, "I know—"

"—Pete!" Myka knows she set herself up for that one, but still, he didn't have to _go_ there, did he?

Pete holds his hands up between them, as if that could really hold back her irritation. "—_But," _he says, "I was talking to Artie about this artifact and he said that the person wearing the thimble needs to be able to call up a mental image that's, like, identical to the person they're trying to look like, especially in the face. And you're the one with the magical memory. So." He holds the thimble up between them, between his thumb and forefinger, and thrusts it toward her.

Myka doesn't even try to keep herself from rolling her eyes. "_You're_ the one who had your tongue down her throat, Pete."

"Right, and there are other of her… ahem… assets that I could probably replicate perfectly, but her face is a little fuzzy, I gotta admit."

Myka groans. "You are _impossible_. Fine." She takes the thimble and, holding her left hand up, fingers wide like she's about to do a magic trick, plants the thimble on her ring finger. Instantly she feels a twisting, tugging sensation, like she's a wet rag being wrung out, and then there's a brief feeling of dropping, and then it's done. She looks at her outstretched hands, paler and squarer than her own, with shorter fingernails.

"Okay, then," she says, and chuckles at strangeness of the shape of the vowels in her throat, forming that impeccable British accent. "How do I look?"

When she looks up again Pete's eyebrows are halfway to his hairline and his chin has dropped to his collarbone.

"Damn, Myka, you're making me want to get all up-close and personal with that face again, and that's just weird because it's _you_."

She punches him in the shoulder, hard.

"Ow!" Pete yelps, hopping back. "Yeah, you're still Myka in there, aren't you."

"Stuff it, Pete. Let's just get this over with."

It will be awhile, some time yet, before Myka will admit to herself that the clarity of H.G. Wells's face in her mind has very little to do with her eidetic memory.

Then, for the second time in her life, Myka watches somebody commit murder, and knows that whatever her reason for remembering Wells's face the first time around, she can say with absolute certainty that she'll never forget it now.


	3. The Flying Man

**TWs for this chapter: drug abuse and overdose, reference to the physical restraint of people with mental illnesses, one of the characters is a trans* teen prostitute (no, she's not the one with the drug problem), also some period language used to describe developmentally disabled people that reads as offensive today.**

(I promise this story will not always be this grim, but when you're telling a story about someone who tried to bring about an apocalypse... well...)

**On the plus side, Bering & Wells slow burn tees off here. :)**

* * *

Nurse Valerie truly does have a soft spot for Helena Wells when Helena isn't going out of her way to be difficult.

Just look at her, now, the way she's talking to Tommy Smith, the elderly simpleton, who is devastated because he accidentally tipped a bird's nest and broke the eggs on the ground. She is soft with him, patient, as together they put the nest back in the tree.

"There, now, the mother bird can come back and lay more eggs here," Valerie hears Helena say.

Tommy nods and sniffs, his greying hair flopping down over his forehead. "Will she?" he asks.

"She might," Helena says, "but if she doesn't, it will be because she found a new tree and built a new nest, up high, where nobody can accidentally disturb it. Don't you worry, she'll have plenty of young, yet."

In moments like this, Valerie truly thinks that Helena has the soul of a wonderful mother, buried beneath her broken psyche. It's incredibly tragic, particularly given the circumstances.

/

"You're _pregnant_?!"

Charles shouts it instead of "hello" when he finds Helena in the common area, his words echoing between the wood floor and the plaster walls of the room. The soft buzz of conversation around the room dies; the gazes of nurses and patients turn and alight on the brother and sister talking in the corner.

"Charles," Helena says, placating, "Please don't lose your temper. It won't change anything."

"_Don't_ _lose my_—" Charles begins, loudly again. Helena cocks her eyebrow; Charles glances around the room, catches the eyes of their audience, and lowers his voice. "Don't lose my _temper_?" he whispers, enraged spittle flying from his lips. He doesn't care. "How could you get pregnant in here, Helena? _How_?"

Helena has the audacity to actually _roll her eyes_ at him. "Surely, brother, you don't need me to explain _that_ to you." She crosses her arms over her chest.

Charles has had a lifetime to develop a tolerance for his sister's unapologetic arrogance and sarcasm, but now, in the face of a problem that _he_, not she, will somehow need to resolve, he reminds himself to breathe, deeply, in through the mouth and out through the nose. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, and then runs his palms down the length of his face.

"Dr. Austin has asked me to find a home for the baby," Charles says.

Helena's eyebrows come together. "What? Why? The child is mine."

Charles fights not to fist his fingers in his own hair in exasperation. "You can't raise a child in a sodding _asylum_, Helena," he shouts, gesturing to the room with an open hand, as though the inappropriateness of the environment requires pointing out.

"I won't _be _in the _sodding asylum_ by then. If this doesn't convince them that I'm cured, I can't imagine what will!" Helena shouts back, throwing her arms up.

"Miss Wells! Mr. Wells!"

Charles and Helena turn their heads simultaneously toward the voice. It's Nurse Valerie, approaching them at a quick clip, jaw set across her angular, unpleasant face. "You're upsetting the other patients. I _must_ ask you to soften your tone, or I shall be forced to ask you to take your leave, Mr. Wells."

Helena palms the back of her neck and looks down at the floor. "I'm ever so sorry, nurse. We'll be quieter."

Charles shifts his gaze from the nurse to Helena and back again. "Yes," he says, "I do apologize."

Nurse Valerie nods officiously and turns on her heels to resume distributing the afternoon medications.

"Helena," Charles says, softer, "the doctor doesn't think you're cured. He thinks you've gotten worse. He says your sexual inversion disorder has been supplanted by severe hysteria."

Helena's eyes widen as though she's been slapped and she steps back, fumbling until she grasps the arm of a rocking chair and collapses into it. Her hands drift to her knees where they bunch and release the fabric of her dress, over and over again.

"Dr. Austin said that?" she says quietly.

Charles pulls over a chair from the nearest table and sits opposite her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"How did this happen, Helena? The doctor says that all of the guards were reviewed and he's confident it was one of them."

She blinks in silence at the movement of her hands against her own knees.

"Dr. Austin says that in a moment of delusion, you must have seduced one of the half-wits in here," Charles tries again, as softly as he can.

Helena's eyes snap up at that, hands spreading flat against her thighs. "Dr. Austin said _that_?" she repeats, in a harsh whisper.

Charles nods.

Helena's eyes widen and moisten, and she pulls away from him, just a little. "You don't believe him, surely," she says.

Charles heaves out a heavy breath and shrugs. "I've no idea what to believe, Helena."

The moisture in Helena's eyes finally wells up and crests over her lower lashes. Charles remembers, oddly, the moment when they were seven when their father told them that Charles would be enrolled in school, but not Helena, because if the family could only afford to educate one child it should surely be the boy; she had been devastated, consoled only by Charles' promise that he would let her borrow his books when he wasn't using them.

She pulls her sleeves over her hands and scrubs angrily at her cheeks, almost as pale as the walls around them. "Do you truly think so little of me?" she murmurs sadly.

Charles reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out his handkerchief, which he hands to Helena. She eyes it for a moment like it might explode, but then accepts it and dabs at the corners of her eyes.

"I just need to know what happened, Helena," Charles says. "I have seven months to find a home for the baby, and if the father is a simpleton then Dr. Austin says the baby—"

"Dr. Austin this, Dr. Austin that," Helena spits, much louder than necessary. "Dr. Austin is the greatest simpleton in this house!" She stands abruptly, balling his handkerchief and tossing it into his lap with completely uncalled-for aggression.

Charles stands with her. "Helena—"

"I would like you to leave now, Charles. Thank you for visiting." She spins on her heel and crosses the room to another empty rocking chair where she sits, covers herself with a blanket, and closes her eyes.

Charles doesn't know whether to cry, laugh, or scream at his sister's perpetual impossibility. But he remembers their childhood and how Helena would help him with his mathematics and spelling, even though she'd learned them from naught but books and he'd been tutored in school.

He'll find a home for the baby somehow. His parents are, of course, out of the question, and there's no way he could raise a child on his own, nor afford a housekeeper to help him with the job. But he'll find something.

/

Charles looks tired and haggard when Wolcott sees him at The Morlock's Arms that night. It's not an uncommon look on him ("studies at university are stressful," he says, usually) but it's especially stark this evening, as though someone's spilled an inkwell beneath each of the man's eyes.

"Long day?" Wolcott asks.

"You've no idea," Charles sighs as he heaves himself onto a barstool.

"Did you go to the hospital again today?" Wolcott asks. He knows Charles has a relative who's been sick in hospital for many months, but Charles has never offered more detail, and Wooley's had the distinct impression that further inquiry wouldn't be welcome.

Charles nods, and then raises his hand to flag down the bartender and order a stout.

"Well," Wooley says as Charles awaits his order, "I'm afraid the trail of the Ripper's gone cold, so I can't regale you with more of those stories. But I've been reading that book you recommended."

"Oh, the Sherlock Holmes thing?" Charles asks. His pint splashes a little as the bartender deposits it in front of him; he picks it up and indulges in a healthy gulp.

Wooley smiles a little and nods. "It's great fun. What I wouldn't give for a consultant like that over at the Yard," he adds, laughing, "We'd have got the bloody Ripper months ago."

/

There's no warning this time, no knock on the door, to alert Jonathan Austin of his unexpected guest; the door simply opens, she comes in to his office, and it closes behind her.

He clears his throat. "Miss Wells. I don't believe we have an appointment right now?"

She looks at him and lifts an eyebrow, cocky, as though she knows something he doesn't. Wordlessly, she meanders to the bookcases on the far wall.

"Here lie the riches of Bethlem Hospital," she says, wandering slowly alongside the shelves, trailing her fingers over the leather-bound spines. "We've discussed the vice of selfishness, Dr. Austin; it's improper to keep such bounty all to oneself."

Jonathan sets his pen on the edge of his blotter. "The books wouldn't be good for you. We've discussed this."

But Wells keeps moving, eyes darting from shelf to shelf, finally alighting on one brown volume. She reaches up, catches the corner with the tips of her fingers and pulls the book down into her hands. "E.B. Tylor, the great ethnologist," she says, as she opens the book and begins to thumb through the pages.

"Put that back, please, Miss Wells." Jonathan is controlling his irritation well, he thinks, particularly in the face of such glaring disrespect for his prescribed treatment regime for this patient.

She cocks her head to the side, acquiescent, and closes the cover. "Tell me, Dr. Austin," she says, as she reaches up to replace the book on the shelf, "do you subscribe to Mr. Tylor's theory that our society is the most developed in the world, and that every other savage or barbarian culture is simply losing the race we call 'progress'?"

"Miss Wells—"

"Because I can't help but wonder," she speaks over him, and he feels himself recoil as if slapped by the indignity.

"Miss Wells—" he says, louder this time, but she turns on her heel to face him and begins to stride toward his desk, speaking louder still—

"—wonder if the so-called savages of the world are also prone to disavowing their unborn children, or if that's a modern quality of this so very progressiveestablishment," she growls, and the fronts of her thighs are pressed to the edge of his desk opposite him.

Oh, no. _No_. She's got some nerve, bringing this up. He slams both palms against his desk and is gratified when she twitches a little in surprise, her self-righteous smirk dropping for just a moment.

"You can't possibly be insinuating that I'm the father of your child," he growls.

And there's her smirk again, the pretentious, arrogant…

"Oh, can't I?" she says, with a chuckle—she's _laughing_ at him. "Have there been any developments that have radically altered our scientific understanding of where pregnancies originate? Because as we both know, if new knowledge has been uncovered since I arrived here, I certainly wouldn't be aware of it."

Jonathan pushes his chair back and leaps to his feet, leaning over the desk toward his patient. He takes a deep breath, releases it, and says, as calmly as he can: " I cannot possibly be the first or only man you've had here. You're oversexed, Miss Wells, it's a clinical issue, and these things emerge in patterns. I don't know how many other guards or patients you've seduced, but care will be taken in your observation until—"

A smaller, strong fist pounds fiercely on the surface of his desk. "You most certainly _are_ the only one!" Wells shouts. "_Oversexed?_ You actually think I would... I would _do_ that to one of the poor men trapped in here—_" _

"Yes," Jonathan says, in a voice he hopes is calming. "I do. And I don't blame you for it. Sickness is sickness."

"Sickness is…" she shakes her head, as though incredulous, and lifts one hand to cover her mouth. She closes her eyes to re-center herself. "This is a pointless conversation," she says, exhaling. "Here's a more meaningful one: the child growing in my womb is half yours and I have no home to give it. Do you?"

It is, as they say, the straw that breaks the camel's back. Jonathan sits back down in his chair, reclines a little, and picks up his pen in a gesture that, he hopes, she will interpret as dismissal. "There's no place in my home for your bastard, if that's what you're asking."

And that's when she completely loses control.

"My bastard? _My bastard_?" She slams the front of the desk with both hands. "It's a _child_! There is a _person_ growing inside me who needs a home, and you won't let _me_ raise it—I would sooner raise a child in the seventh circle of hell than in this establishment—" her hands grip the back of the chair opposite him and flip it onto its back.

Jonathan stands again and reaches across the table to try to catch one of her flailing limbs. "Please, Miss Wells, this agitation isn't good for the baby."

"What, now you care about what's _good for the baby_?" She bats his hands away easily and reaches for his lapels, and she's surprisingly strong, absurdly so, and Jonathan feels himself pulled over his desk toward her with a jerk that sends his own chair toppling backward. "What's _good for the baby_ is a stable home, a family," Wells growls, "and incidentally, what's good for a _family_ is for self-important hucksters like you to keep their spindly little pricks in their trousers—"

The door opens. Someone from outside the office has finally heard the commotion. Two guards charge in, and perhaps it's because she's so worked up that they manage to subdue her more easily than they often do, even while she bucks and fights in their grip.

In rushes Nurse Valerie with the bottle of laudanum, but—

"No laudanum," Jonathan says, standing straighter and smoothing his lapels back down against his chest, "nor any other tranquilizer while she's pregnant. We'll need to use other means."

"Yes, Dr. Austin," Nurse Valerie nods and runs back out of the room to fetch the necessary restraints.

/

A fortnight passes before Charles feels ready to return to Bethlem to visit Helena after his abrupt dismissal the previous time. When he arrives, the nurse stops him in the entryway.

"She's not ready," the nurse says. "If you'll wait here, someone will fetch you shortly."

It's a puzzling development; there has never been any "preparation" required before he could see her on Sunday afternoons in the past. Something to do with the pregnancy, he reasons, and he slides his hands into his pockets while he waits in the lobby.

When he sees Helena in the common room, she looks… different. Her hair, always kept up in a neat chignon, lies down against her back in a simple braid. And her eyes—they aren't vacant, as when she's been drugged, but they're simply… dull.

"What's happened to you, Helena?" he asks her, softly.

She shakes her head and waves her hand at him, dismissively. "I'm fine. Shall we go for a walk in the garden?"

He agrees, but as they walk he can't help noticing that she seems to have developed some tics he's never noticed before: she flexes and releases her fists almost obsessively, and rolls her shoulders often as if to loosen them. He wonders if it might be the pregnancy, too, though she's too early on for there to be many visible changes.

"I've had quite a bit of time alone, lately, so I passed the hours by telling a story to the baby." Her hands rest over her abdomen, like a shield between it and the quiet garden around them. "If I tell you, would you write it, like you did the last one?"

Charles smiles. "Certainly, Helena. What's this one about?"

"It's about a lieutenant talking to an ethnologist. The lieutenant tells the story of how he accidentally persuaded a group of Indian Sepoy that he was flying, when in reality he merely managed to survive jumping off a cliff."

"Sounds thrilling," Charles says. "Start from the beginning?"

* * *

Keisha lights a cigarette and thanks god, or the universe, or whatever, that the weather is finally warming up, like _actually_ warming up, after this crazy-ass winter and late spring.

"Can I borrow that?" asks Dawn, pointing to the lighter. "Mine's outta juice."

Keisha nods and hands it to her, then bends down and straightens the hem of her skirt. She's tall. Crazy tall to begin with, then add the six-inch monster heels and she's practically a giant. She hates it for life, but not for work. For work, it helps, a lot of the time. Guys who go for girls like her usually like the fact that she's tall.

"Hey," Dawn says. Keisha straightens up and Dawn is holding the bic back out to her, but as Keisha takes it, Dawn jerks her chin to point down the road. "Someone's lookin' at you," she says, before taking a thick drag and backing away. "You get this one, you take something to Feather, yeah?"

Keisha nods _yes _and then turns around, and sure enough there's someone walking up the way, and when you been doing this job long enough you can tell when someone's looking at you even before they can tell it themselves, and this person's looking. Typically the johns come through here in cars but sometimes walkers happen. The walkers are good because usually they just want a couple hours in the hotel around the corner and sometimes Keisha can get another trick or two in in the same night.

It takes a second before Keisha realizes it's a woman who's looking, walking down the sidewalk in expensive clothes like she owns the damn place, like this shithole is someplace better than Corona after dark, which is what it is. For a second Keisha worries about this woman checking her out, walking like that, because half a block past Keisha this woman's going to cross Joey and Joey doesn't like it when people don't know how to behave on his turf.

But the woman's still looking, walking closer, and she's not even faking anymore like she's not. So Keisha stands a little taller, steps out into the middle of the sidewalk and cocks her hip, stretches out one long, long leg and says, "Hey, honey, you looking for company tonight?"

The woman stops and looks Keisha straight in the eye, and that's weird because usually they don't want to look her in the eye at first, like they're embarrassed, like she isn't selling them something she's sold a thousand times before, like she's going to judge them for it. But this woman, she's looking at Keisha out of the corner of her eye like a teacher who don't like your excuse for being late to class or something.

Keisha steps back, feeling like a butterfly on a pin. She opens her mouth, trying to figure out how to back her way out of this hella uncomfortable situation but then the woman starts talking.

"How much for the pleasure of your company for the evening?" she asks, and damn if she don't sound like Mary Poppins or some shit, like she's from England.

"Depends how much time you want," Keisha says. "And what services."

The woman stares at her again, like she's staring right through her, and Keisha fights the urge to step back, like these sidewalks haven't been hers since she was fourteen.

"Well, perhaps that will depend on how well we get along," the woman says. "Come along."

And the whole conversation is so weird that Keisha goes with it, because even if this woman's a serial killer or something Keisha's got a good foot on her in height and at least fifty pounds in weight and she's pretty sure nothing bad can happen. So she follows her down the sidewalk, past Joey who glares at her because she's not supposed to talk business on the street like that. Half a block later Keisha's phone beeps. The text is from Joey:

_if shes a narc ur on ur own_

Keisha closes the phone and puts it back in her purse. "There's a place over here we can go—"

But the woman keeps walking. "I'm hungry," she says. "Is there a place where we could perhaps find something to eat?"

Keisha walks her to the Dunkin Donuts but the woman turns her nose up at it (seriously?) so they keep walking for awhile—it feels like forever in Keisha's shoes—before they get to a cleaner part of Queens and there's a Denny's. This is way outside of Keisha's usual turf; the blonde at the host stand looks her up and down before taking them to a booth in the back corner.

Well, whatever. She's been on the wrong side of worse.

"Order whatever you want," the woman says.

The woman orders a club sandwich and fries (seriously, who buys anything that's not breakfast at Denny's?) and Keisha orders a Lumberjack Slam, 'cause she's aiming for leftovers.

"So you gonna tell me your name?" Keisha asks.

The woman smiles, but just barely. "Perhaps. Will you tell me yours?"

"Perhaps," Keisha says, mocking just a little, and she's just being contrary, she knows, but whatever.

"A different question, then," the woman says, leaning forward on her elbows on the table. "How old are you?"

"Twenty," Keisha says, smooth as anything. But the woman cocks her eyebrow and twists her mouth to the side.

Keisha rolls her eyes. "Fine, eighteen."

The woman shakes her head _no_, ever so slightly, and Keisha's good at this, she's been doing this for awhile, like more than a year but she's never been caught out so quick, and while she was maybe a little worried that this woman was a narc after getting Joey's text, she's not worried about it anymore, because no cop figures it out that quick.

"Sixteen," Keisha says.

The woman nods like she heard what she wanted to hear, and sits up again. "Helena," she says.

Keisha sinks back against the bench. "Okay. Keisha."

"Well, Keisha," Helena says, "tell me how a young woman such as yourself would find herself living as you do."

Keisha's eyes open wider, because usually people are sort of weird about using girl or guy words for her when they don't know her well. A lot of the time people use the wrong words but when it's johns they usually just avoid using words like that altogether.

This lady is weird, Keisha thinks.

"If you don't know the answer, I think that's a kinda personal question," she says.

"Well, I'm compensating you for your time this evening, so I believe I'm entitled to ask you whatever I want."

Keisha opens her mouth because _hell_ no, paying for her time doesn't give some bitch the right to know her life's story, but the woman holds her hand up to stop her, like she's expecting it, and says, "You need not answer truthfully, nor even answer at all. I prefer honesty, but I do always enjoy a good story when that isn't an option."

Keisha exhales, and damn if this isn't the most unusual trick she's pulled in… maybe ever.

"I guess some parents are okay with it when their little boy says she wants to live as the little girl she always was, but not mine," she shrugs. "Whatever. I made it work. Obvi."

"Yes, _obvi_," Helena says, and there's something thin in her voice, thin and angry. She's looking at Keisha but she's sort of looking through her, and one hand slides inside the collar of her shirt and wraps around her necklace.

"Hey," Keisha says, "you okay?"

This seems to sort of jolt Helena out of it and she says, "Yes, yes, of course."

The food comes and they eat and they chat, and this lady is _weird_ (like, Keisha's pretty sure she didn't know what GPS was. The hell?) but she's also nice enough. And she's all proper, with that accent like somebody from the movies or something, but she's eating this Denny's sandwich like it's the last meal she's ever gonna have.

"So you're from, like, England or something?" Keisha asks.

"Yes," says Helena, as she smothers a fry in ketchup.

"So why are you here in New York? In—in Queens?"

"Work," Helena says. "A colleague of mine had some things stored in Queens that I needed to retrieve." She takes a long drink of her water and Keisha can tell that this line of conversation is over.

Keisha has set her silverware down when Helena looks at her, and then at her plate, that still has a whole slice of French toast on it, and some sausages, and some potatoes. Keisha ate all the eggs, 'cause they don't travel well.

Helena looks at Keisha's face, and then at her hands. Keisha realizes she's tapping the tabletop without really thinking about it. She stops.

"You're still hungry," Helena says. "Why don't you finish it?"

Keisha feels her eyes go wide, deer in headlights. She picks up her fork because Helena's right, she _is_ still hungry, but she was really hoping to box up these leftovers and bring them to Feather. If she can find Feather, that is.

"I thought I'd save it for tomorrow," Keisha says. "A girl's gotta watch her waist and stuff."

"If you were watching your waistline, you wouldn't have ordered that meal," Helena counters.

And it's so weird because seriously, this woman sees right through her, and that isn't fucking typical for her because not to be whatever but you learn to be a damn good actress in this line of work.

Keisha sighs. "I was going to bring it to a friend."

Helena's sandwich freezes halfway to her mouth. "A friend," she says. "Is this friend a… colleague?"

Keisha can't help but snort a little at the word choice, like she works in an office or something, in some cubicle somewhere. "Sort of," she says. "On her good days."

"Finish your meal," Helena says. "I'll order something else for your friend, on one condition."

Keisha looks at her. Waits.

"I want you to take me to this friend of yours to deliver the meal in person."

Keisha starts shaking her head before Helena's even finished the sentence. "No. No. I mean, she can be hard to pin down, and she's in a _real_ bad place these days—"

Helena holds up a hand. "You must have some sense of where she'd be if you'd been planning to bring food to her that you'd otherwise eat yourself. And I assure you, whatever her 'real bad place' may be, I'll be fine."

Keisha swallows and looks down. She wears a ring on her right thumb, just metal, nothing fancy, and she twirls it around with her other hand. Eventually, she picks up her fork. "Fine," she says. "But we're taking a cab to get there, and you're paying for it."

/

The cab doesn't want to go far off the main drag in this corner of town. Keisha says it's fine, they can walk the rest of the way, so Helena pays the man (Keisha has to remind her, awkwardly, to tip) and he's gone practically before the door is closed.

A couple blocks down the road is an abandoned storage facility. Keisha leads them down an alley to the entrance, which is really a big piece of plywood propped against where there used to be a door.

"You might want to take a few deep breaths before we go in there," Keisha says. "It smells pretty bad."

Helena smiles a little and, sure enough, inhales a few times deep through her nose, and out through her mouth. Then she wraps her fingers around the edge of the plywood and pulls it back so Keisha can lead them inside.

They find Feather passed out in a corner of one of the old storage rooms, curled up on her side with her back to the wall. The syringe is still on the floor, next to the foil and the tourniquet.

"Hey, Feather," Keisha says, kneeling beside her. She reaches down and taps her cheek a few times, gently. "Hey. Somebody wants to meet you. We brought you dinner, girl."

Helena has crouched down just behind Keisha, holding the Styrofoam container from Denny's in both hands.

After a minute Feather finally blinks. She looks up at Keisha and her eyes are all blown out, she's high as a fucking kite, of course. But she smiles.

"K," she says. "It's good to see you."

Used to be that Keisha would cry whenever she saw Feather like this. This was why Joey kicked her outta the fold: because she was a goddamn tweaker who couldn't be trusted to stay clean (from drugs, or from the bug). But Keisha's used to it now.

It's a shitty thing to be used to.

Keisha looks back. Helena is still holding the food and she's watching Feather blink herself into something sort of like alert. Slowly, shaking, she sits up against the wall, and Keisha hears a small gasp – the first really surprised reaction she's heard from Helena all evening.

It's the belly, Keisha knows. She's gotta be seven months in by now.

Helena crabwalks a little closer. She opens the Styrofoam and sets it in Feather's lap, plastic fork stabbed upright into a sausage link.

"Feather?" Helena says, glancing at Keisha for confirmation. Keisha nods. "Feather, you must eat something."

But Feather just stares at her like she's staring through her and doesn't move.

"I told you, she's in a bad way," Keisha says. "If we leave the food she'll eat it eventually, or, I mean, _somebody_ will—"

But Helena has scooped a mouthful of scrambled eggs onto the fork and she's offering it to Feather's lips as though she's feeding a toddler or something. Feather blinks twice, slowly, and then opens her mouth.

And damn if Helena doesn't feed the girl the whole meal like that, while Keisha sits there, watching, fingers tangled in Feather's.

After, Feather tucks her knees up and rolls back down onto her side with a drawn-out sigh.

"We must get her to a hospital," Helena says. "For her own sake and for the baby's."

Keisha shakes her head and can't help but laugh, hard, like someone beat it out of her. "She been, like, twice since she got pregnant. They clean her up okay but as soon as she gets out she's back to the same thing. It's not like the state pays for halfway houses."

Helena inhales sharply and pulls her fingers through her hair. "How much do they cost, these halfway houses?"

Keisha shrugs. "I dunno. A lot. And the treatment programs cost even more."

The breath that escapes Helena's lungs seems like it's got a purpose or something, like it's hard and firm. "I'm going to look into it," she says.

/

Keisha's a little disappointed when Helena invites her back to her hotel, because she'd really let herself think that maybe that wasn't where this evening was going.

They take a cab across the bridge into Manhattan without talking. It's after 3 am when Helena leads her into a chain hotel. They stop at the desk and Helena asks for a disposable toothbrush and a razor and the guy working there eyes Keisha like she's a sewer rat, and then eyes Helena like she's almost as bad. Keisha's used to it, but she's surprised that Helena doesn't flinch.

There are posters everywhere for Fashion Week and Keisha stares at the one in the elevator, with the tall, thin model and the beautiful red dress.

"I'm clean, you know," Keisha says, because she realizes that she wants this woman to know this. She wants Helena to think well of her and it's the first time in awhile that she gave a damn about what anybody thought about her outside of work stuff. "Things get bad sometimes, but I always knew if I was going do this job I was going to spend my money on hormones and rent and maybe surgery one day, not meth." She swallows and looks down.

It's a bit of a white lie. Sometimes she's given Feather money for meth, because if there's anything worse than seeing her as fucked up as she was tonight, it's seeing her when she's withdrawing.

The hotel room has two big beds in it. Keisha walks to the middle of the floor, then turns and faces Helena and shrugs off her jacket. Keisha's slipping her fingers under the hem of her own shirt, about to pull it off when Helena steps close, puts her fingers on Keisha's wrists and stops her.

"For goodness' sake, darling, none of that," she says. She walks to the closet and pulls out one of the rough hotel bathrobes and offers it to Keisha with one hand, the toothbrush and razor in the other.

"I'd loan you some pyjamas but I doubt any of mine would fit you, you're so very tall," she says. She tilts her head toward the bathroom. "There's toothpaste in there, and soap, and of course plenty of towels if you wish to bathe. You can have the bed closest the door."

When Keisha comes out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, the room is dark and Helena is asleep.

_Weirdest trick ever_, Keisha thinks, but she's not complaining as she slides into the other bed and sinks into the pillows.

Then, out of nowhere, Helena's voice: "I assume 'Feather' is a nickname."

"Yeah," Keisha says. "Her name's Heather, really."

"Why do you call her that, then?"

Keisha laughs, because it's kind of a morbid story, really. "'Cause birds need feathers to fly, but feathers can't fly on their own. And she's never been real good at living the difference between flying and falling, know what I mean?"

"I do," Helena says, and Keisha hadn't really meant it as a question but the way Helena answers is real honest.

"Goodnight, Keisha," Helena says.

"Goodnight."

/

When Keisha wakes up she hears the shower running. She blinks twice at the clock before she registers it's one o'clock in the afternoon.

_Damn_, she thinks, as she stretches.

Beside the clock there's a bag from Starbucks with her name written on the side in fancy-looking letters. Inside there's a coffee—not hot anymore, but warm is good enough—and a fruit cup and a glazed donut.

She's finished eating and is sipping the coffee, sitting in the chair by the window, when Helena comes out of the bathroom. She looks like she stepped out of another time, or something, with these loose-fitting pants and that tight-fitting vest.

"Good," she says, "you found your breakfast."

"Yeah," Keisha says. "Thanks."

Helena sits in the other chair, across the table. "I was supposed to work today," she says. "Over at the Fashion Week event. But given the hour it seems silly to start now."

Keisha just looks at her, under a cocked eyebrow, as she sips her coffee.

"It's been a terribly long time since I last visited New York City," Helena continues. "So very much has changed. I wondered if perhaps I could trouble you for your company for some time longer, as a tour guide?"

_Weirdest trick ever_, Keisha thinks _again_, but she shrugs, and nods. "You're the boss, long as you're paying," she says.

Helena's smile slips for just a tiny second but then it comes back, wider, maybe a little more forced. "Of course, darling," she says.

So Keisha plays tour guide for the afternoon. They ride a bus tour, wander around Times Square and Greenwich Village. Helena asks about the opera but Keisha says, honestly, that she doesn't know a thing about it.

At the end of the day Helena presses five crisp hundred-dollar bills into Keisha's palm, and Keisha's eyes are already about to fall out of her head when Helena pulls out two more twenties and hands them over, too.

"The extra's for your taxi home," she says. Then she reaches into her inside jacket pocket and pulls out a pen, and then fishes an old receipt out of her wallet.

"Here," she says, as she scribbles something on the back of the receipt. "My phone number. Please don't hesitate to call if you need anything. And keep me abreast of how your friend is doing. Contact me in one month's time either way. If I can help her in any significant way, I should know by then."

"Okay," Keisha says, and tucks the paper in the inside pocket of her purse. "So, I'll be seeing you?" she says as she climbs into the taxi.

Helena smiles quietly. "I certainly hope so, darling."

/

A little over two weeks later, Helena is sitting in the back seat of a taxi beside Claudia in Tamalpais, on their way to the energy drink factory. Myka is sitting in the front seat. Myka glances up at the rearview mirror and smiles to see H.G. and Claudia leaning together over H.G.'s grappler.

"The cable is hollow," H.G. is saying, "so that the wire that triggers the claw can pass through. When you pull the trigger here, the first click launches the grappler, the second opens the claw, and the third releases and retracts the whole thing."

"This is so badass," Claudia gushes. "And it's all powered with just a high-tensile spring?"

H.G. just cocks her eyebrow at that, and nods.

"Hey, H.G.?" Myka asks.

"Yes?" When she looks up, meeting Myka's eye in the rear-view, her eyebrow is still cocked and the edge of her lip still curled and Myka swallows against a surprising tug, deep in her gut.

"Where—um, where did you get that grappler, anyway? Was it in your house in London, or is this a new one you built?"

H.G. smiles wider, now. "Come, Myka. A lady must have her secrets."

Now it's Myka's turn to cock her eyebrow. "Saying things like that doesn't help in the trust department, if that's really what you're after."

"Convincing you both is only the first step," H.G. says, shrugging. "I need something to keep for the regents."

Myka bites her lips and squints into the mirror, then she shakes her head, bemused, and looks down. "You really don't want to do this the easy way, do you?"

H.G. smirks and leans forward, propping herself against the back of Myka's seat. She pauses there and waits, until Myka twists around and looks her in the eye. "Never," she says.

Myka rolls her eyes.

/

They're walking into the factory when Myka hears H.G.'s phone beep. H.G. pulls it from her inside pocket and reads the text message; her hand comes up to cover her mouth and her eyebrows come together ever so briefly.

"Everything okay?" Myka asks.

"I—yes. May I ask you a question?" H.G. asks. For the first time, Myka feels she can glimpse through the brash bravado and into something deeper. H.G. seems somehow… small.

"Sure," Myka says.

"Do the letters 'O' and 'D' mean anything in particular in today's parlance?"

"What, like, together? Like, 'to O.D.'?"

H.G. nods, and swallows.

"Yeah," Myka says, "it's slang, stands for overdose. Usually people use it to talk about drug overdoses."

"Death from the overconsumption of harmful, addictive substances," H.G. says, and despite the unpleasant subject matter Myka can't help but love that H.G. has casually strung together an eight-word sentence that includes three words of three or more syllables.

"People can sometimes overdose without dying if you get them to the hospital fast enough. Why?"

"No particular reason," she says, and Myka can tell it's for a very particular reason, though she has no idea what that may be.

/

Claudia is up to her armpits in an ice bath and Myka doesn't know whether she should be focusing on her or on H.G., who's over at the lab table yelling loudly at Mahoney about how neutralizing the acid won't work, it's too late for that, they need to _denature the protein_ that's been produced in Claudia's body _from_ those amino acids, and have their been _no_ advances in science since her heyday in these fields!

Myka decides that she can't contribute to that conversation and that H.G. seems to have everything under control. So she turns back to Claudia, leans down, pushes sweaty hair back from her forehead.

"Just hang on," she says, "just hang on a little longer."

Claudia is shaking from the cold of the ice but when Myka feels her breath against her forearm it's _hot_, steaming hot, this-can't-be-good-for-her-organs hot.

"It's been a long time since anyone sat with me when I was sick," Claudia says, and she tries to smile, and Myka wants to say _hush_, wants to say _you don't have to try so hard to be tough_, wants to say _me too_. But she doesn't. She just smiles and grabs a handful of ice and presses it to Claudia's forehead.

"Myka," Claudia says quietly, her voice shaking. She licks her cracked lips.

"Yeah?" Myka says.

"If this happens I just want you to know—and tell Artie, and Pete, and—and Leena that I said thank you for giving me a shot. Nobody ever gave me a shot before you guys, and—"

"Shh," Myka murmurs. She feels tears welling up in her eyes because she's realizing, all of a sudden realizing how much she and Claudia are alike despite how different they are, going through life like they've always got something to prove. "Hush," she says again. "There are some very smart people over there working on getting you fixed, and if they fail I'm going to shoot both of them so they're very highly motivated."

"I'd be quite motivated regardless of the threat of a bullet, darling," says H.G., and Myka has forgotten, for a moment, that the others are within earshot.

H.G. is yelling at Mahoney again, now. Something about hydrochloric acid that Myka can't pretend to understand, but she has an idea and takes advantage of the distraction to lean closer to Claudia, who probably wouldn't mind a distraction herself.

"Claud," she says, "if I wanted you to read somebody's text message, once this is all done, what would you need to be able to do it?"

"A—a message that was already sent? Or in realtime as they're being sent and received?"

"One that was already sent."

Claudia licks her lips, then closes her mouth to let it re-salivate against the heat. "Just the phone number."

"Okay." Myka looks up. H.G. and Mahoney have their heads together over the centrifuge, which is conveniently making a loud whirring noise, so she sits back in her chair and fumbles for the pocket of H.G.'s jacket and pulls out her phone. It's a basic phone, probably a disposable prepaid. She opens it, finds the text messaging function, and sends a blank text to her own number. Immediately she feels her pocket buzz.

The next day, when they're back in South Dakota, Myka pulls H.G.'s number from her text message records and Claudia takes no time to track it. Almost immediately, she identifies the text she'd been wondering about:

_Feather is dead. OD. Found her this AM._ _–K._

That night, Myka gets a text message to her own phone from the same number:

_You needn't have taken my phone number surreptitiously, Agent Bering. Had you asked, I'd have given it gladly. _

Myka stares, dumbfounded, at the text. She knew, of course, that Wells would have her number since Myka had entered it to send the text, but she hadn't anticipated that the Victorian woman would have known how to interpret what Myka had done.

She's still staring, contemplating the risks and benefits of this new situation and whether she should tell Artie, when her phone buzzes again:

_How are you this evening? How is young Claudia recovering from her ordeal?_

Myka stares, and smiles, and shrugs inwardly to herself.

_We're both fine_, she types back. _How are you?_

And so it begins.

* * *

**This is the height of the OC action; we'll be mostly in canon characters from here on out I think.**


	4. A Vision of the Past

**Lengthy author's notes (sorry!):**

**I don't normally say this kind of thing because it feels like pandering, but: thanks to everyone who's taken the time to drop me a line and say what you think on this thing. I am, up to this point, proudest of it out of all my fics, but my timing sucks in that the show is kind of imploding and it seems things are thinning out a little around here as a result. While I have every intention of finishing this story I'm a little worried it'll be crickets around here by the time I get there, so thanks to those of you who stick it out.**

**A note re. Jack the Ripper: I needed some kind of serial criminal to advance the plot and stole the idea of Jack the Ripper from the S5 promos since it's at exactly the right era. But I haven't seen the S5 episode in which he appears, so my use of him here is all me; don't try to make my use of him make sense with reference to W13 canon, because it won't. I've attempted to be somewhat historically accurate in terms of the murders attributed to him and their timeline, but of course I've spiffed things up in a way that hints toward artifact-related nastiness.**

**The W12 caretaker McGivens is hermitstull's creation from her Warehouse 12 fics (they're in her collection "The Vodka Made Me Do It," posted in its entirety on AO3; chapters 30, 40, 53, 54, 62, 69 and 71. GO READ if you haven't, because they're amazing).**

**Shout-out to Manhattanite for giving me a little help with the geography of Queens here.**

**TW: A character is suicidal at one point in this chapter. There is also one use of a transphobic slur.**

* * *

Nurse Valerie's stomach ties itself in knots over the behaviour of Helena Wells.

Her tantrums were as bad as ever—worse, even—in the days immediately following the confrontation in Dr. Austin's office. But they can't give her laudanum, with the pregnancy, so they resort to the older methods, the kind of methods usually reserved for far more dangerous and reactive patients than Miss Wells is.

When they can, they resort to a straight-jacket. It's the most humane option, after all; she can move around, stand and sit as she chooses, but without the ability to harm anyone else or herself.

But then sometimes, sometimes she becomes so upset that the straight-jacket will not suffice; she throws herself at anyone who comes near, or at the furniture if there is any, and screams at them to untie her. Those are the days when they strap her to a gurney. She howls until she's hoarse, hauling against the restraints until her screams turn into tears.

Sometimes she exhausts herself enough to fall asleep.

On one such day, Nurse Valerie walks into the room, even though policy says she shouldn't do such a thing without a guard. But young Miss Wells is sleeping and in those moments Valerie notices how _young_ she truly is, at twenty-three. Valerie remembers being twenty-three and thinking her growing was finished, she understands, now, that growing never finishes, not if you don't want it to.

She looks at Miss Wells and sees a young woman who comforted old Tommy about a dashed bird's nest.

After a week or two of this, Miss Wells learns where her tantrums and outbursts will put her. She adjusts, like the knob on a gas lamp turned down to the barest glow. Dr. Austin comments on her remarkable progress, but Valerie cannot help but lament the loss of her energy, her joie-de-vivre. She has a hard time watching the shadow of Helena Wells pace quietly about the common room and understanding that outline, that bare minimum, as recovery.

/

Charles has spent very little of his adult life in the company of pregnant women prior to Helena. He's heard stories, though, of how they may be moody or temperamental but through that they glow, they bask in the grandeur of their body's majestic endeavor.

He can't help but notice that he sees none of that in Helena. If anything, he sees the opposite. She, who has always been so mercurial in virtually all respects, has become grey, dull. When he visits, they walk in the garden, or sit in the common room, and speak of pleasantries, the weather. She persists with the odd tics, the rolling of the shoulders, the rubbing of the wrists, but those seem to dwindle off in the later months.

Sometimes he tries to engage her by discussing his studies at university, which have always fascinated her before. But now, when he brings them up, she stops him with a shake of her head or a wave of her hand and says "Not now, Charles. Thank you."

Visiting her becomes so dreadfully boring.

"She's making wonderful progress," Dr. Austin says, and Charles wonders how this can possibly be progress when Helena was clearly so much happier when she was "ill."

"Have you found a home for the baby?" she asks, every visit. And every visit, he is forced to say that no, he has not, though he's looking.

And he does look. He sends letters to cousins who have families. He reaches out to childhood friends. Eventually, in desperation, he writes his father. His father responds by telegram, one word: "never."

"I am sorry to have burdened you with this, Charles," Helena says, but her voice is so empty, so dispassionate, that he knows not how to interpret her words. She has never been one to apologize without sarcasm, but now, he hears not even that.

"I am not sorry for her, though," Helena says, curling her hands over her stomach.

"Her?" Charles says.

Helena shrugs slowly. "Intuition." She smiles wistfully down at her own body, pressing against the dress that wasn't cut for pregnancy. "While she is with me, I am never alone."

She composes stories for the baby and sometimes, on sunny days, she tells them to him, asks him to write them down for her. She's as marvelous at telling stories as she is at virtually everything else, so of course he transcribes them and keeps them in a folio on his bookcase.

(Well, not all on his bookcase. He's taken three of them, his favorites, and sent them to various magazines to see if they'll publish them. He's waiting for responses.)

One day, he sees her smile, a hint of the old Helena pushing through the surface. They are walking in the garden and she stops, brings her palms to her swollen belly and says, "the baby is moving." She grins, then, widely, first down, to herself, and then over at Charles. "The baby's moving!" she says again, and he's so relieved to see her smile that he can't help but smile back.

Three more visits pass and Charles sees no hint of that light again.

"If she remains this calm in the weeks following the delivery of the baby, we may be able to look into releasing her. She may rehabilitate after all," Dr. Austin says.

"Are you quite all right?" Charles whispers to her, one day, in the corner of the common room where nobody can hear.

She smiles a little, just with her lips, and then shrugs one shoulder. "I suppose," she says, and that's when Charles knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that she is not. And he knows not what to do, because this version of his sister might finally be released from Bethlem, but she is empty as a frame without a picture, a hat without a head.

/

Charles looks horrid when Wooley arrives at The Morlock's Arms that night. There's an empty pint glass in front of him and a half-empty one beside it, and he's slumped over the bar, hair in disarray. That's how Wooley knows there's something _really_ wrong: Charles is forever preening, hoping to catch the eye of this or that young lady, and will never be seen with a hair out of place.

Wooley wonders, briefly, if he should turn around and leave, because the day's been terrible for him, too, and perhaps they wouldn't make good company for one another.

But he's here, and he wants a pint, and misery loves company, surely.

"Rough day?" Wooley asks as he pulls up the neighboring barstool.

"The most recent among many," Charles mutters, before taking another long drink.

"Care to tell me about it?" Wooley asks.

Charles huffs out a breath of air. "I'd rather hear what's new in your life."

"Ugh," Wooley groans. He sets his hat on the bar-top and orders his pint from the bartender. "Jack the Ripper has come out of retirement," he says. "Or at least it looks that way. There's another case from a few months ago that might be his work, too. We're revisiting it now, in retrospect."

Wooley's mind retains the most recent crime scene more vividly than any photograph or drawing, not because his memory is terribly remarkable, but because some images burn themselves into one's mind with the fire and noise of a brand on the flank of a cow. He's seen the earlier ones, too, that were in every respect more gruesome – so gruesome that he'd been able to dissociate himself, to an extent. To operate as though the mutilated bodies were just that, and had never been people.

(He'd felt guilty about that, when he'd first realized he was doing it. But his sergeant had explained that it was a good thing to do, that it made it possible to keep doing the job without driving himself to Bedlam with the horror of it.)

But this latest woman had been all but intact. The off-centre gash in her neck had been her only visible wound, but the blood—the_ blood_—so much of it, everywhere, slicked across the body like oil. And there was no detachment. There was no pretending this was just a murder without a victim, that this wasn't a _person_ lying there.

(And he needn't reference the words he'd heard his superiors use to describe these women. Women of the night, they were, but still someone's daughter, someone's mother, and as deserving of justice and dignity as any other woman on the street.)

Wooley blinks for a moment and realizes he's been silent, staring into nothing. Charles is staring at him, blearily, a third pint glass sweating into his palm.

"Wooley," Charles says. "Wooley." He must not have eaten much today, for two pints to affect him like this.

Wooley pinches the bridge of his nose. "Yes, Charles?"

"Ihaveanidea," he says, his upper body tipping toward Wooley, his elbow sprawled across the bar-top. But his eyes, for the first time this evening, are bright.

"Do you?" Wooley says.

Charles nods. "D'you remember… d'you remember when I told you about that Sherlock Holmes book? And you said you wanted to hire a genius consulting detective to help you find the Ripper." He sits up and eyes Wolcott expectantly over the rim of his glass as he takes another drink.

Wooley rolls his eyes. "Yes. But Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist."

"You're right," Charles says, reaching forward and poking Wolcott's knee with a resolute index finger. "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional." Poke. "Character." Poke.

"Yes, Charles." Wolcott waves to the bartender; his friend clearly needs a glass of water.

"What if I toldya I knew a real-life, bona-fide, Sherlock Holmesian genius?"

Wolcott's running out of patience for this. He picks up his glass and swallows a gulp of beer, then another. He'll see Charles again some other, more sober day.

"No!" Charles says. "No. I see what you're doing. Put your glass down."

"Charles—"

"No, see, when you say that, you sound just like her. _Exactly_ like her, and you've never even met."

"You're drunk, Charles," Wooley says. "Whatever this conversation is, it can wait for another day."

Charles straightens up in his chair, both hands braced on the edge of the bar. He looks at his half-empty pint glass and pushes it away. "You're right," he says, "I'm drunk. But that doesn't make me an ignoramus." He waves down the bartender and asks for a glass of water. "There is someone very dear to me who needs help," he says, his voice measured, calculated, pushing through the dull edges of the alcohol. "She needs help and I promise, she can help you. So sit down and give me the chance to convince you, at least 'till you get to the bottom of your pint. But _no rushing_." He thrusts an accusatory finger at Wooley's shoulder.

Wooley slouches forward toward his drink and a heavy breath escapes. "All right," he says. "Out with it."

Charles smiles. There's water in front of him now and he drinks the whole pint glass full and then thrusts it toward the bartender for a refill. "All right, Wooley," he says, "let me tell you about my sister."

/

Charles notifies the staff at Bethlem by telegram that he will be visiting with Detective Constable Wolcott for a consultation with Helena. He asks them to notify her. He takes a day's leave from his mind-numbing coursework for the occasion.

When they arrive, Helena looks a little more like she used to. Her hair is up in its chignon for the first time in months, and while the dress tugs awkwardly over her stomach, she carries herself tall and square. She shakes Wolcott's hand in greeting as a man would, and Charles is mortified but Wooley merely smiles.

The hospital has granted them access to an examining room and, after much haranguing between Dr. Austin and Wolcott, has consented not to have a guard in the room with them.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Helena asks as she settles onto a chair opposite Wolcott's. Charles sits between them.

Wolcott clears his throat. "Well," he says. Then he coughs. "Your brother has led me to believe you have certain… remarkable talents?"

Helena, of course, arches an eyebrow at him. "I'm a woman of many talents, Detective Constable Wolcott," she says, "but I'm afraid I can't tell you whether I can help you unless you tell me what the problem is."

Wolcott bends down and pulls a folder from his satchel, where it rests by his feet. He sets it on the table.

"I presume you've heard of the serial killer we call 'Jack the Ripper'?"

/

On the cab ride back to South Kensington, Wooley can barely contain himself. He wants to detour the cab to stop by his supervisor's house immediately. He wants to go directly to the Scotland Yard office and wait there eagerly until morning.

"She's a genius, your sister," he says, over and over. "And I haven't the foggiest what to make of her idea but despite their absurdity they make more sense than anything else I've seen up to this point."

When presented with the crime scene photographs and investigators' notes, Helena had swallowed hard, several times, and covered her mouth with her hand.

"Helena," Charles had said.

"Are you quite all right, Miss Wells? I do apologize for the graphic nature of the images," Wolcott said.

Helena was silent for a long moment, long enough that Wolcott, apparently deciding that the images must be too graphic, leaned forward to shuffle them back into the folder.

Helena's hand shot forward of its own volition and clapped the papers back to the tabletop. "No," she said. She swallowed once more and leaned forward, sliding the photos apart over the tabletop and beginning to leaf through the paperwork. "Give me a few minutes to look this through, and then I want you to tell me everything you know that doesn't appear in these files."

They talked for an hour. They talked for another hour. Charles lost interest after thirty minutes. He found himself fighting to stay awake, his head falling forward against his chest, again and again.

"This is positively bizarre," Helena said. "I'll tell you what I think. I think Miss McKenzie was not murdered by the same person who murdered the first five."

"I agree," Wolcott said. "But to be frank, I'm not sure why I feel that way."

"Look at the wounds here—"she pointed to one photograph—"and here," she pointed to another. "Look at the angle of the cuts and where the weight has been applied. The first five women were murdered by a right-handed man and the second by a left-handed man."

Charles barely contained his chuckle at the way Wolcott's eyebrows leaped into his hairline and he practically threw himself across the table. _He'll be buying my pints for a month_, he thought

"You're right," Wolcott said. "You're absolutely bloody right—sorry—and nobody ever noticed that."

But Helena was still puzzled, Charles could tell. She was shaking her head like she would when they were children and she was working through a difficult mathematics equation in her head.

"I assume tissue samples were taken and analyzed from each of the victims?" she said

"Of course," Wolcott replied.

"No traces of any toxins, I assume?"

"None."

"So very strange," Helena said quietly, almost to herself. She scratched absently at her temple with one fingernail.

Charles sat up at this. He hadn't been paying much attention but he recognized her air, the one that said she had a thought she thought unworthy of sharing. "What is it, Helena?" he asked.

She shrugged, then pulled three of the photographs closer to her. "Not all of the pictures show the same level of detail," she said, "but all three of these women have these pale bumps on their skin, see? This one at her jaw, that one at her elbow, and that one on the back of her hand."

Wolcott looked and shrugged. "Indeed. Warts, I suppose. Women in their profession are tragically prone to…"

But Helena was shaking her head. "Not warts. Warts have a different texture to their surface and they tend to grow in clusters. These bumps are evenly-spaced. I read a study a few years ago… this looks like the skin irritation that can arise from arsenic poisoning. But if the bodies contained arsenic, it would have shown up in the testing."

Helena sat up straighter, then, and pressed her fingertips to her eyes. "It's as though something's inspiring an arsenic-like reaction in these different victims with different murderers, without leaving any kind of chemical evidence. Which is completely implausible, of course."

She leaned forward and began to gather the paperwork back into the file. Wolcott, brow furrowed, leaned forward to do the same.

"I'm sorry, Constable Wolcott," she said as she watched him slide the folder back into his bag. "I've given you nothing of use. Were I the investigator, I would attempt to discover what might have connected these different murderers that would have inspired these strange symptoms, but there's barely a thing to go on."

But Wolcott was smiling broadly, too broadly for a man who'd just spent hours poring over gruesome images of murder victims, Charles thought.

"On the contrary, Miss Wells," he said, "you've been extraordinarily helpful. Extraordinarily."

She smiled at him and shrugged, and Charles noticed her eyes weren't as dull as they'd been when he and Wolcott had arrived.

Now, sitting in the cab, Wolcott turns more fully to face Charles alongside him on the bench. Charles is tired, and Charles is bored, and while he appreciates the good the visit may have done for both Wolcott and Helena, he is keen to be allowed to sit in _silence_ for a few moments.

But Wolcott won't have it. "What's she in Bedlam for, anyway?"

Charles huffs. "She's an invert," he says. "Perverting the minds and bodies of innocent young women, so my father said."

Wolcott furrows his brow at that. "But then how… how could she become… the baby?"

Charles rolls his eyes. "Damned if I know. She won't tell me."

Wolcott's energy tempers at this, much to Charles' relief. Charles settles against the opposite side of the bench and closes his eyes. The sound of the horses' hooves is soothing when he listens to it.

"You want her released," Wolcott says.

Charles grunts instead of saying "yes."

Wolcott's head tips forward, empathetic. "I don't have that kind of authority."

Charles shrugs. "You might, one day."

/

The following day, Wooley presents his new findings to his sergeant, who glances over the paperwork and sets it aside with a brief comment of "good work, Constable."

"But sir, different people are committing murders with the same oddities connecting them. Don't you think that's—"

"I said _good work_, Constable," the sergeant interrupts. "Back to your desk with you."

Wooley is annoyed. Infuriated, really. But he's never been one to disrespect authority quite so explicitly, so he takes his frustration back to his desk with him.

That night, Wooley returns to his flat before venturing out for his nightly pint. He deposits his satchel by the foot of his bed and turns to fetch the meal left for him by his landlady and nearly leaps fifteen feet in the air because _there's a man in the middle of the room_.

Wooley glances at the door to his room. It's still locked.

"Detective Constable Wolcott," the man says.

Wolcott can only blink. "Er—yes, sir?" he says, when he remembers to speak.

"Excellent work on the Ripper case," the man says.

"What are you doing in my room?" Wolcott asks, growing firmer now, a little more stable on his feet as he's recovered from the surprise.

The stranger takes a step forward, and then another. The floorboards creak loudly in the still room. "My name is McGivens," the man says, "and I'm here to offer you an invitation to endless wonder."

/

Charles has taken Wooley to visit Helena in Bethlem. Wooley seemed to benefit from it greatly, or at least to enjoy the conversation.

And then Wooley disappears.

A week passes, and Wooley never appears for their nightly pints at the Morlock's Arms.

Charles goes to visit Helena again. She's worse than he's ever seen her. Her braid is disheveled, her eyes dark and sunken. She is nearly silent as they stroll quietly through the garden on a day of glistening sunshine.

Her hand drifts up to pat a stray hair into place, and gravity pulls down on her sleeve. Charles' hand darts out of its own accord and grasps her forearm, pulling it out between them, so the deep shades of her bruised wrist twitches beneath their gazes.

"What happened, Helena?" Charles asks. But Helena merely tugs her hand away and pulls her sleeve down over her wrist. She shakes her head and looks down.

"Please don't bring your friend here again," she says, just before he leaves to return to South Kensington.

Charles pauses. "You seemed to enjoy him," he says.

Helena is tugging at her sleeves, fiddling with the buttons that keep them closed at the cuff. "He seems lovely," she says, "but I can't. . . the turning myself on again, and then having to remember how to shut off. I can't do it again."

Another week passes. Wooley does not appear at the Morlock's Arms. Charles resents him. No: Charles is coming to despise him, for taking sight of his family's greatest weakness and choosing to flee under its weight.

Charles' studies are suffering. His tutor has cautioned him regarding the potential repercussions of his declining performance.

Charles hates his studies, anyway.

He continues to go to the pub, alone. It is a small thing he can control in a life that feels like a carnival ride gone off its hinges.

And then, one evening Wooley shows up, out of nowhere. Behind him is an Indian man, older, shorter, balding, bearded.

"Charles!" Wolcott says, smiling, as he weaves his way through the tables, the older man following behind him.

Charles can bring himself to respond with naught more than a grunt.

"Oh, don't be like that, old chap," Wooley says, clapping him on the shoulder. "I've been transferred to a new division. I'm sorry I couldn't come to tell you."

"Well, bully for you," Charles says.

"Bully for me, indeed," Wolcott replies, and he's grinning, positively glowing. "Come sit at a table with us, over by the back. This is my new supervisor, Mr. Chaturanga. And we have a proposition to discuss regarding your sister."

* * *

Myka feels weird about these texts she gets from H.G.

They don't come often, fortunately, and she doesn't always respond to them. When she does, her answers are always inoffensive. She doesn't divulge any information about where she is or what she's doing. Most of the questions she answers have to do with modern life and the like: "What's the difference between a credit card and a debit card?" and "What exactly is the significance of the word 'hashtag'?".

One morning she wakes to two texts:

"Please tell me that science and medicine have caught up in knowledge to what women have always known about the nature of their monthly visitor"

"and have concurrently devised better materials for the management thereof."

Myka guffaws, still blinking awake in her bed, and responds with a series of messages that explain pads, tampons, Motrin, and where to find them.

They're all inoffensive questions and she provides inoffensive answers. And she doesn't tell Artie about it.

It's not that she trusts the woman. Far from it. It's… curiosity. And maybe a little, just a little bit, of hero worship, because _H. G. Wells_ is writing _words_ that are intended for _her_.

She looks forward to those texts even though she tries not to encourage them, these minuscule micro-treatises from her favorite author, but she finds herself needing to school her features when they come in, just like she did when she started dating Sam and they were both worried about what the rest of the team would think.

Her pocket buzzes. She pulls out her phone, swipes it awake and opens the message. There's a pull at the inside of her cheeks. A tug, like the pull of a grappler.

There's a post-it note tucked inside the front cover of her copy of _The Time Machine_.

/

Joey spots Keisha's fuckin' narc a mile away, walking down his sidewalk like it's _her_ fuckin' sidewalk.

"Hey," he says, when she gets close. "You just keep walking, bitch."

So of course the fuckin' narc stops.

"I really don't see the need for such language, young man."

"Yeah, whatever," Joey sniffs. "Keep steppin."

"I'm looking for Keisha."

"I bet you are."

The bitch stops and stands there, arms crossed like a pissed-off schoolteacher.

"Keisha," she says.

Joey shrugs, then turns to go talk to Dawn who looks like she's about to start fuckin' withdrawing right there on the curb—

and something grabs his wrist and suddenly Joey's face-down on his own damn sidewalk with his wrist pinned to his back and this fuckin narc is kneeling on his back and he's just down, like some kind of damn pussy.

"Oh, bitch, you have no idea what you just did," he says, because he's not an idiot. He carries a gun, and she's kneeling on his back but he's got one hand free—

And, nope, she's got the gun now, took it right outta the back of his pants.

"There's a fee for that kinda touching around here," he says into the concrete.

"Where. Is. Keisha," the woman asks.

"Fuck off."

Then there's a click and Joey knows she's just flipped the safety off on his Glock, and then, yup, there it is, cold muzzle against the side of his jaw. Joey groans.

"Keisha," she says.

"I ain't her fuckin' keeper."

"I'm rapidly losing my patience with you, young man." She cocks the gun and he feels her lean down, close to him, her lips almost touching his ear. "I don't require a gun to kill you, but if you do not answer my question truthfully the next time I ask it, I _will_ shoot you just for the satisfaction of watching the stain grow through this lovely blond hair of yours. So, one last time: Where. Is. Keisha."

And Joey's met his share of psychos in his life but this one takes the cake and he's not gonna fuck with that.

"I don't fucking know, man," he says. "Goddamn tranny bitch. After that tweaker buddy of hers kicked it, she was all down and shit, and nobody wants to hire a streetwalker who looks like someone just shot her dog, so I told her to step off. She use to have a place, like, six blocks that way." He points with his chin, as best he can, under the gun.

And the bitch gets off him. She steps back and he stands up, slow. His girls are just standing there, twenty feet away, watching.

"You got something to say?" he says, stepping toward them. Jewel shakes her head "no," Dawn just turns away, everybody else just looks down and tries to fake like they weren't watching in the first place.

But the fucking narc bitch still has _his_ goddamn gun trained on him.

"Where does she live?"

Joey shrugs. "Sutphin and 115th, down that way. Second floor. I don't know which apartment, though."

It satisfies her. He watches as she flips the safety back on and then—

"Fuck that, man! That's my gun!"

She's tucking it in the back of her own pants.

"Is it?" she asks. "And I assume you have the paperwork to prove it."

"Fuck you."

"You're quite fond of that word. It's unbecoming a gentleman."

"Fuck you."

"I'd rather not." She's looking down the road toward Keisha's place, but now she looks back at him and damn if the look she's giving him isn't scarier than the feeling of the damn gun in his face.

"I have a particular dislike for individuals who abuse the bodies and intentions of young women," she says. "A person's choice of profession is her own and I have no moral concerns with the trade plied on this corner, but if I find that you have laid a hand on anyone, or sought to intimidate anyone into working in any capacity against her wishes, I will find you, and I will kill you, perhaps with your own pistol."

Joey straightens his shirt and lifts his hat to pull his fingers through his hair. "Yeah, man, whatever."

She slides her eyes away from him and now she's looking at his girls, over his shoulder. He's not going to look back to check on them. Not when she's got his gun. So he just watches her watching them, sees her nod. Then she turns away and starts walking.

He lets out a long breath. "Who the fuck says 'pistol,'" he says to himself. "Seriously."

/

When Keisha gets home in the morning she's not expecting to find Helena sitting at her kitchen table.

Keisha's standing in her kitchen doorway. Helena's got a glass of water and her legs crossed at the knee and she's just sitting there like she owns the room.

"Who let you in?" Keisha asks. "Chandra? Alex?"

"Alex, I believe," Helena says. "She's asleep. "

Keisha rolls her eyes. "What'd you pay her? Fifty? A hundred?"

"Seventy-five," Helena says, and shrugs. "Per her request, I've touched nothing but this glass of water and the chair I'm sitting in."

Keisha tips her head back, annoyed, and rolls her neck to one side, then the other. She realizes her mistake a moment too late; Helena is on her feet and holding Keisha's chin like she's a kid, turning her face to the side.

"Who did this to you?" she asks, soft and angry.

"Oh, come off it," Keisha says. She shoves Helena's hand out of the way and crosses the room to the freezer. With a Ziploc of ice pressed against her swollen jaw, she drops gracelessly into the other chair. Helena sits back down in the chair where she'd been sitting before.

"Somebody hurt you," Helena says.

"Shit happens," Keisha replies.

"I looked for you on your corner. You weren't there. I haven't heard from you in ages."

Keisha sits up straighter. "Before, I just thought you were weird. Now I think you're a fucking stalker."

Helena is quiet now. They are sitting on opposite sides of the small table, both with their back to the wall, so they don't have to look at one another. Keisha glances over and Helena is looking down, now, at her hands in her lap. She's made Helena feel bad and for a second she feels bad about it. But Helena had no right to show up at her house like this. She's off her tits if she thinks that overpaying for a weird, buddy-buddy night and day is supposed to make them _friends_.

But she relents a little anyway. "Look," Keisha says, "Things stopped working with Joey. I work with a different crew now. Dude's a little rougher than Joey and sometimes shit like this happens. It's okay. I been taking care of myself for two years. I got things under control."

Helena looks up and stares straight ahead like she's got x-ray vision through the wall over the kitchen sink. She pulls her fingers through her hair and it falls back to exactly the right place.

"I'd like to see you safe," she says. "I should have access to more money soon. What can I do to see you safe?"

And Keisha laughs, just once, harsh and thin. "I've heard that one before, from you."

Keisha knows she hurt her that time. She adjusts the ice pack against her face and doesn't look over.

Silence sits with them for a long moment.

"I'm sorry I couldn't arrange things quickly enough," Helena says. "I tried. I'd like to try again."

And Keisha's angry now because this is _stupid_, this is _so fucked up_, and who the hell does this woman think she is?

"Look, Helena," Keisha says. "This ain't my first rodeo. I met your type before, the ones who wanna be the great white hope that saves the little Black hooker. Only difference is, most of them want to 'save' me because they want to fuck me, or because they're religious types. You, you're trying to use me to fix something broken in yourself."

"And if I am?" Helena interrupts, growling. "Do you _like_ this life? Working for a man who hits you?"

"What're _you_ gonna do, Helena?" Keisha yells back. "You gonna put me up in an apartment in Brooklyn or some shit? Tell me to get a job as a check-out girl at a supermarket for six-fifty an hour, and then what? You gonna pay for me to get my GED and go to college? You gonna pay for my hormones and my surgery?"

"You shouldn't have to live like this," Helena bites out. "You're a _child_."

Keisha looks at her for a minute, then she's smiling and she doesn't even know how it happened, because _duh_, how didn't she see this before? "_Oh_," she says, "_That's _your thing. You got _baby_ issues."

Helena's shaking her head no in that too-strong way that Keisha knows means she hit the nail on the head this time. "That's unfair," she says.

"Life's unfair," Keisha replies.

Keisha's jaw is starting to get numb so she goes to the freezer and puts the ice pack back on the shelf. She works the joint a few times, open and closed and side to side, and it moves better than it did before. The swelling's down a little.

When she turns around Helena is leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, looking down at the floor. Her fingers are tangled together, squeezing so hard the joints are white.

"Listen," Keisha says, crouching down in front of her. "What you're feeling—I get it. I do. But I'm going to keep living my life the way it works for me. This gig is okay. I don't hate it. Keeps me close to people I care about. Money's okay. In a couple months I think I can get a computer and then I can do things on Craigslist, maybe, get off the corner." She rests her hand over Helena's clenched fists. "But it's on me. It needs to be on me. It's not your responsibility. I can't be. I don't want to be. Okay?"

Helena sits up suddenly, like she's robot somebody just switched on. She pulls her fingers through her hair and flips it back behind her shoulders and then stands, fast and jerky.

"Very well," she says, and she sounds so British Keisha can't help but want to laugh. "I'll see myself out."

But Keisha walks her to the door anyway. "I think you should erase my number," she says.

Helena nods. She glances up at Keisha out of the corner of her eye, without lifting her head, and then steps out the open door into the hallway.

/

It's mid-afternoon and a woman is crying in a chain hotel room in Astoria. She's kneeling on the carpet, its coarse weave imprinting in her skin through her trousers, and she crouches over her hands, they hover beneath her face, as though she cannot even bear to touch herself with them. Her sobs filter through them as water filters through rocks in a fall.

Between her knees rests a gun, fully loaded, safety off. One side of it is polished smooth where it's spent day after day rubbing against the skin of its previous owner.

She is in the wrong place. She is in the wrong time. She has failed everyone she ever wanted to help.

She wants to end everything. Herself. Everything.

One claw-like hand stretches open, then closes into a fist, then opens again. It reaches for the grip of the gun, picks it up, feels how surprisingly light it is. Wonders if she should test-fire it into a stack of pillows to make sure it works, first. Decides not to bother.

She is shaking, the gun is shaking in her hand, when her cell phone vibrates in her pocket.

Only two living souls have this number. One just asked her never to contact her again. And the other never initiates contact.

She is intrigued. Intrigue is her greatest weakness. She pulls out the phone, reads the text message.

_Bollocks_, she thinks. Purposeful, now, she sets the gun back down on the carpet and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She pulls up the number on her phone and presses _call_.

It rings. Rings. Rings. And then stops, without going to voicemail.

Seconds later, the phone vibrates again. Another text message. She reads it.

_Bollocks again_, she thinks. She stands, tucks the phone in her pocket. She picks up the gun again and flips the safety on. Then she empties it of its bullets; a quick inspection reveals the extra bullet in the chamber and she pops that free, as well.

In her closet she finds a shoe-shine bag. After wiping the gun and bullets with a towel, she drops them into the bag and tucks it into her waistband.

She picks up her room key, and goes downstairs. There's an office for guests that has a computer; she should be able to use it to find the information she needs.

An hour later, after she's found what she needed, she walks two blocks down the road from the hotel until she finds a wastebasket on the curb beside a bus stop.

As nonchalantly as possible, she drops the bag with the gun inside.

/

The first thing Myka thinks, when she hears about Dickinson, is that it's her fault.

It's not rational. She knows it's not. Even as she sits on the edge of her bed, half-packed suitcase beside her, she knows that she should stop listening to her inner monologue, snapping back and forth like an angel and devil on her shoulders. The devil says _you should have been there_ and _he offered you the chance to go back_ and _someone probably killed him to get to you_.

_Or to Pete_, the angel answers. _Or to Artie_. _It's not all about you._

She reminds herself of the number of times she's saved Pete in the year-and-a-bit she's been at the Warehouse.

_Some other partner would have saved him_, the devil says.

_Like some other agent saved Dickinson? Like some other partner saved Sam? _the angel retorts.

She looks down at her hands. They're shaking. There's a white shirt clutched between them; it flutters like a flag in a storm. Surrender.

Myka can hear Pete moving around across the hall, packing his things for the trip. She wants to cry. She wants to be held while she sobs through this, but he's got his own grief to carry and she can't ask him to hold hers, too.

She thinks about Leena, knows that Leena would take one look at her aura and wrap her in soft arms. But there's something… clinical about it, when Leena reads your aura and responds to it. She's motivated by observation, not empathy. And it comes from the right place—everything about Leena is warm—but it's not what Myka wants, right at this moment.

The shirt in Myka's hands is rumpled, now. She tosses it to the foot of the bed and goes to the closet for a crisp one, which she folds, carefully, and lays atop her slacks in the suitcase. She looks down at it a moment and suddenly a wet spot darkens its pristine surface. Then another.

_Dammit_. She wipes her eyes.

She doesn't notice she's doing it when she's doing it: she picks up her phone and sends a text message:

_I just found out a good friend was killed. I'm trying to pack for the funeral and I'm a mess. _

Just saying it helps, somehow. She stands, walks to her closet, and begins to gather the rest of the clothing she needs.

It's the first message she's ever sent to H.G. that wasn't in response to a message H.G. first sent to her.

On the nightstand, the phone begins to buzz. And buzz. And buzz. She walks over, clothing stacked between her palms, and looks down at the screen. It reads:

_Call from_

_JACK GRIFFIN_

_No_, Myka thinks. _No. _The texting is as far as she'll go. She will not talk to H.G. Wells, Warehouse enemy and all-around shady character, on the phone.

She drops her clothes onto the bedspread and slides the icon on over on the touch-screen to end the connection. Then she sends a text:

_I think that's too far. But thanks._

She wipes her eyes with the back of her finger. She finishes packing. She pockets the phone and goes downstairs.

Two days later, the thing that surprises her most is her lack of surprise at seeing H.G. at the cemetery. But H.G., she learns, is a woman who knows a thing or two about loss. When she talks about her daughter her emotion seems forced, like she's an actress putting it on, and Myka understands that. She does, because she did that, too, with Sam. She knows what it feels like to turn off the faucet where your emotions pour out because otherwise you won't be able to stop overflowing with them. You turn it off, you make yourself numb, but people don't understand that numbness so you perform grief and tragedy overtop of the _nothing_ that fills you completely.

This is what Myka sees when H.G. talks about her daughter.

At the hotel, that night, Myka finds the tracking device in her pocket, and laughs. She laughs and laughs, by herself, for the first time in days, for the first time since she got the call about Dickinson.

With a shake of her head, she flips the device off her thumb like a quarter, catches it, and pockets it again.

She doesn't know why she's doing it. She shouldn't do it. This is a really, really bad idea. She should tell Artie.

But she doesn't tell Artie, She just takes the tracker with her in the pocket of every different jacket she wears.

_It gives me the upper hand_, she thinks. _She doesn't know that I know how she's following us._

_Actually, she probably does._

In the airport, when they've got tickets to Moscow in hand and are walking toward security for international departures, she catches, out of the corner of her eye, a head of gleaming black hair. She pivots on her heel to look for it, but it's gone.

"What's up, Mykes?" Pete asks, one eyebrow cocked, his mouth full of airport bagel and cream cheese.

Myka shakes her head. "I just thought I saw… never mind."

He cocks an eyebrow at her. He knows something. She knows he knows. But he's a good friend, so he doesn't ask.


	5. The Devotee of Art

**So, uh, I'm a bad fan who forgot that we already knew what Jack the Ripper's artifact was from S1, so I invented a different one for my purposes. It doesn't appear in this chapter but will probably come back around in a chapter or two. I hope that won't be too distracting. The specific nature of the artifact doesn't matter that much, plot-wise.**

**TW: a character threatens suicide again in this chapter, but doesn't follow through. Also, barbaric Victorian mental "health" practices.**

* * *

Atop the stack of Helena's transcribed stories on Charles' desk grows another stack of magazine and periodicals. He has tucked a scrap of paper in each one, marking the page where Helena's stories have been published in them.

He doesn't take them to the hospital. He doesn't know how she'll react, anymore, the way she's been. But he saves them all—two copies, one for each of them—for some future time.

\\\

McGivens does not remove his leather gloves when he steps into the foyer at the Bethlem Hospital, Agent Wolcott and that foppish Charles Wells stumbling behind.

"Agent McGivens, Scotland Yard," he says to the young woman at the desk. "I've an appointment to confer with a patient here; one Miss Helena Wells."

"Yes, sir, I've got it written down here," the nurse says, "but the doctor has asked me to fetch him to speak to you before I take you to her."

"Well, fetch him, then, please. I don't have all day."

"Yes, sir." She ducks her head to look past him, just quickly. "Hello, Mr. Wells."

"Hello, Nurse Sandra." Charles waves, foppishly. He palms his hair into place.

Dr. Austin approaches with his hand outstretched to be shaken. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Agent McGivens. Hello Mr. Wells, and Constable… Wolcott, was it?"

"That's Agent Wolcott, now," McGivens interrupts, "but we're here to see Miss Wells."

"Ah. Yes. And see Miss Wells you shall, of course. But I'd hoped to catch you because, you see, when your colleague Constable—Agent—Wolcott visited a fortnight ago, Miss Wells became quite agitated for a period of several days. So I must ask—"

"—I can't tell you about the nature of my questions, Doctor. They're classified in the highest order," McGivens says, as stiffly as he can, because this doctor is a man who has, clearly, an unhealthy respect for authority.

"Well, yes, of course. But I must keep my patients' best interests in mind, and so I must request that you keep your conversation moderated to simple and un-challenging topics. It is imperative to her recovery, you see, that she not be burdened with pressure to challenge her mind in ways unbefitting her sex."

McGivens barely huffs out a laugh. "I promise you, sir, that when we leave, she will be as unchanged as if we'd never spoken."

Dr. Austin tips his head in acquiescence, and begins to turn toward the corridor. "Very well, then. If you'll just follow me—"

"One moment, Dr. Austin," McGivens says.

The doctor turns back, looking every inch the puzzled, bearded, bespectacled meerkat. "Yes?"

"I just wondered if you could look at this for me." McGivens reaches into his pocket and pulls out a chip of rock the size of a shilling coin. He places it in the doctor's outstretched hand.

The doctor squints at it. "It's a pebble, sir," he says.

"Really," McGivens says. He takes it back from the doctor and hands it to Nurse Sandra. "Do you see anything else, nurse?"

She glances at it in her palm and shrugs. "No, sir. It looks like naught but a bit of gravel to me."

"Hmm. How about you, Mr. Wells?"

The foppish lad jolts, as though he's half fallen asleep on his feet. "Me?" he says. He stretches his hand toward the nurse, who hands the pebble to him. He lifts it closer to the nearest lamp. "Erm… granite? I believe?"

"Excellent, Mr. Wells. Thank you." McGivens holds out his hand, and Charles hands the pebble back to him. McGivens slips it into his pocket. From the corner of his eye he watches Charles turn a querying glance toward Wolcott, and Wolcott gamely shrugs, feigning ignorance. _Good man._

The young woman in question, Miss Wells, is brought to him in a small examination room while Wolcott and Charles wait in the corridor. Her eyes are grey, dull. Her heavily pregnant abdomen strains against the front panel of the drab patient's uniform.

"Miss Wells," he says as she takes her seat. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pebble. "Would you mind having a look at this?"

He holds the rock out to her; she takes it and peers at it closely. "What should I be looking for?" she asks. "I have not studied geology to any significant degree."

"Well, no matter," McGivens says, and holds his hand out again. She deposits the stone in his palm; he drops it into his pocket and then peels off his gloves as he sits down alongside her. "My name is Robert McGivens. My colleague Agent Wolcott has told me spectacular things about you."

"Spectacular," she echoes. "Mr. Wolcott flatters me. He does seem a lovely gentleman."

"I hope you might be willing to solve a few puzzles for me," McGivens says.

"Puzzles," Miss Wells repeats. "If you wish."

It begins with a few games of noughts and crosses. Then a series of mazes, in different shapes and formations, that she solves with a pen. Then he asks her to complete a series of tangrams, and to respond to a series of word puzzles.

In twenty minutes' time, her eyes are wide and glowing, face split into a wide grin.

"Thank you, Miss Wells," McGivens says, "I've seen quite enough." He begins to shuffle his papers back into his folder.

"You've been testing me for something," she says.

He glances up at her and meets her gaze beneath her cocked eyebrow. "Yes, I have," he says.

"I hope I haven't been found wanting," she says.

McGivens tucks the folder into his briefcase and closes it, and then slips his gloves back on.

"A final question, Miss Wells." He pulls the pebble from his pocket. "About this bit of rock…"

He tosses it to her and she catches it instinctively. Before his eyes, she deflates, the sparkle in her eye dulled to grey, the pink in her cheeks draining. She is the woman she was when he arrived.

"I'll take that back, now," he says, and lifts the pebble from her unresponsive hands.

"I… I'm sorry," Miss Wells murmurs. "What can I do for you today, Mr. McGivens?"

"You've done everything I need, Miss Wells. Thank you."

McGivens tips his hat and steps past her befuddled expression into the corridor.

"What did you think? How did it go?" that foppish Charles Wells is upon him the moment he steps out of the examination room.

"Hold this for me for a moment, will you?" McGivens asks and presses the pebble into Wells's palm before he can think to protest. Before his eyes, Wells's agitation softens, his body relaxes.

"So," Wells says, "I'll wait for you here, then?"

"We're done," McGivens says. "Time to go home."

"Done? Home?!" Wells exclaims, "But we've only just arrived! You haven't even spoken to her yet!"

They pass Dr. Austin in the foyer.

"Thank you for your time and your excellent work," McGivens says, one arm outstretched for a handshake, the pebble pinched between his gloved fingers. A shiver runs through Dr. Austin when their hands clasp.

"I must have misdirected you," he says, blinking. "You're walking in the wrong direction. Miss Wells will be meeting you in a room down this way."

"Change of plans," McGivens says. "Much obliged. Thank you."

They file into the foyer. "Catch!" McGivens calls, and then tosses the pebble toward Nurse Sandra at the desk. She catches it instinctually, as Miss Wells had done, and McGivens watches the shiver pass through her, too. She blinks at them. "If—if—if you'll follow me, a guard will bring Miss Wells to you in a moment…"

"No need," McGivens says. "Thank you." He plucks the pebble from her palm and slips it into his pocket.

In the cab, Charles leans over to Wolcott. "I took a day's leave from my studies for _this? _This has been a colossal waste of everyone's time. He didn't even _speak_ to her!"

Wolcott attempts to soothe him: "Believe me, old friend, Mr. McGivens learned more from this visit than you, or even your sister, will ever understand."

\\\

Two days later, a messenger delivers a telegram to Charles during one of his classes at the university. "Re your sister," the message reads. "9 am tomorrow 136 Wardour St."

136 Wardour st. is a bookshop in Soho. The attendant inside does not greet him, he merely points to a door in the back of the shop. It opens into a windowless room lit with a gas lamp, with an old, wooden table and chairs and little else. It smells of stale air and tea. Wolcott and McGivens are there. So is Chaturanga, the man from the pub. And there is a woman with dark skin and a stern, angular face whom Charles has never seen before.

They all work for Scotland Yard—at least, all of the men do—but this feels like the most unorthodox and surreptitious Scotland Yard meeting that Charles could possibly imagine.

"Sit down, young man," McGivens says. "There's tea for you. Milk? Sugar?"

"No, thank you," Charles says. There is a teacup on the table in front of him; he pulls it closer with both hands and leans down to blow on it.

"Let's cut to the chase, shall we?" McGivens says.

Charles nods. "Yes, sir."

"Your sister has the potential to be of tremendous value to the Scotland Yard enterprise of which we four are all a part," McGivens says. "So much potential that we would be remiss not to take steps to encourage her to join our ranks."

"I think she would like that, sir," Charles says. He sips his tea. "She loves puzzles and things, and the hospital—it's killing her. It's killing her." He says it more quietly the second time, almost to himself.

"Her diagnoses, such as they are, are of little concern to us," McGivens says.

Chaturanga nods emphatically, and then shrugs. "'Hysteria' is a figment," he says, "and 'inversion' is not our concern."

Charles feels the breath slip from his lungs, though he can't tell if it's from nervousness or relief.

McGivens leans forward, bracing his elbows on the table. "I can have her discharged from hospital into your custody, Mr. Wells, on order of the Crown," he says, "but I'm given to understand that you do not have the means to house her and that there is, as of yet, no fixed plan for the baby."

"She wants to raise the child herself. Away from Bethlem, of course," Charles says. "But she will need help. She's been there a little over a year. It will take time to adjust to life outside again." His hands are shaking now, with nerves and excitement, and he will no longer touch his teacup for fear of spilling.

"That's what I told them you'd told me," Wolcott says. "And that's where Sophie, here, comes in." He gestures with an open palm toward the woman. She smiles at Charles and tips her head in greeting; Charles smiles back, tight-lipped.

"Six months," says McGivens. "We're proposing to support you for six months. You shall be relocated to a three-bedroom home in the West End, and we shall hire Sophie to be your housekeeper, to help Miss Wells with the baby. During this time Miss Wells will, in addition to caring for her child, be expected to cultivate mental stability and good health. At or before the six-month mark, we shall approach Miss Wells about joining our employ formally. Should she accept the offer, arrangements will be made so that the cost of housing and of Sophie's employ may be partially compensated from within Miss Wells' salary, and the rest from your own, in the employment of your choice. Should she decline, you will have one month in which to relocate or to find another source of income. Does this offer seem fair to you?"

Charles' hands are fisted in the fabric of his trousers, but he feels his elbows shake nonetheless. He feels his heels stutter against the floor. He feels that he might cry, might sob like a child with the relief.

"Yes," he says. "Yes."

\\\

Sophie watches the colours swirling around the young man, Charles. When he arrived in the room his aura was pink: nervous, agitated. It has settled, now, into a dark blue, verging onto purple: he has calmed, he is relieved, but he is on the edge of being overwhelmed with emotion.

She leans toward him. "We'll take good care of your sister," she says, firmly. She is not a warm person. She has never been a warm person. But she is a caring person, and he is not much younger than her daughter, and his heart is good.

She smiles at him.

He smiles back.

"Yes," he says, "we will."

\\\

At 9:23 AM on that same day, a messenger boy knocks on the door of a laboratory at the Normal School of Science.

"Urgent telegram for Charles Wells," he says.

"Charles isn't here today," replies the irate professor.

The boy goes to his next address, for a boarding house in South Kensington.

"Landlady's out but I'll see he gets it," says the man who answers the door.

The boy shrugs. He has no other options. He leaves the telegram with the boarder, who tucks it in his pocket and promptly forgets it exists.

\\\

The following day, Sophie meets Charles near a pub in South Kensington and together they board a cab bound for Southwark.

Charles is mauve, today: light, relaxed. Happy.

"Thank you for agreeing to come with me," he says. "I think Helena will prefer to meet you now, before the baby is born and before she comes home."

Sophie smiles carefully and nods.

"Do you have children of your own, then?" Charles asks, then claps a hand to his forehead. "I'm sorry. That's terribly rude of me. You don't have to answer that."

Sophie smiles a little more softly this time. "I have two," she says. "They're grown, now. My daughter, the youngest, married a year ago."

Charles shifts on the bench to better face her. "Is it hard to raise a child?"

Sophie cocks her head to the side. "It is," she says. "But it's wonderful, too."

But when they arrive at Bethlem, things are not wonderful. Someone is suffering. Someone is in such agony that the very air of the place seems, to Sophie, to be tinted in pink.

The nurse from the desk runs up to them as soon as they come in the door.

"At last!" she says. "We've been wondering what kept you."

"Kept me?" Charles asks. "Whatever do you mean?"

"The baby, of course. She arrived last night."

Charles surges in red; it melds into the pink that saturates the room. "I wasn't notified!" he shouts. "I was supposed to be notified by telegram the moment she went into labor!"

"We sent a telegram yesterday morning, sir." The nurse shrugs.

Charles opens his mouth to answer but the sound that echoes through the room is of a female voice, crying out harshly, just a sound, not a word. Charles jumps like a startled squirrel and then charges through the door, deeper into the hospital.

"Mr. Wells!" the nurse calls as she chases after him. "Mr. Wells, the doctor will—"

"Hang the doctor! Where is my sister? Where is my niece?"

Sophie is not old, but she's not as young as she once was; it's all she can do to keep up as she follows Charles and the nurse into the bowels of the hospital. The pink becomes thicker, darker, more ominous, and when she hears another cry it pulses in thick, dark, sanguine red.

They come to a junction in the hallway and Charles skids to a halt. He gazes down one direction ,then the other.

"Mr. Wells!" the nurse gasps, her breathing strained from their run through the corridors. "Wait here, please, and I'll fetch the doctor."

"Where is she!" He's shouting, unapologetically. Sophie can see the red and the black streaking from him; he's infuriated, he's terrified.

The aura of rage and grief fills the building like a fog. Sophie looks one way, then the other. The red darkens down the hallway to their left.

"This way," Sophie says. "Come along."

Charles nods and follows after her. Behind them, Sophie can hear the nurse groan in frustration. Beneath that there's another sound: the woman's voice is crying out continuously, now, not merely in bursts; she might be sobbing, or shouting nonsense syllables, but they don't stop. Sophie follows the aura left, then right, and right again, and she is taller than Charles so he must shuffle to keep up but he does not complain.

"How do you know where we're going?" he asks.

"I know," she says.

She strides to a halt in front of a closed door. The rage emanating through the wood is so thick that Sophie struggles to stay upright in its draft; she wants to duck, to curl and cower beneath it like a windstorm—and to think that there's a _person_, there, _making_ this feeling—

Sophie swallows hard and steels her stomach as Charles reaches for the doorknob.

Inside stands a bearded, bespectacled man (the doctor?) with his arms crossed and his head turning from side to side like a disappointed schoolmaster. There's a flustered-looking, aged nurse, fussing and murmuring quiet words over a gurney.

And that's the site of the rage, that's where the red comes from that saturates the whole building. It's the gurney, the woman strapped to it at the wrists and shoulders and ankles and hips. She is fighting the restraints, tugging and pulling with the force and irrationality of a rabid animal, so hard that the gurney rocks against the floor. And the red rage coats her, it pulls on her, it climbs around her body like primordial ooze visible only to people like Sophie, who have the gift.

"Helena," Charles says.

The woman is screaming. _Screaming, _and sobbing. "You took her from me! Where is my daughter? Have you no mercy? Have you no compassion? How could you take an infant from her mother? _Where is my Christina?" _Between the words are guttural sounds of despair and rage, and Sophie is not warm but she is caring, and she finds herself beside the woman on the gurney, reaching over and putting her hands on a sweat- and tear-slicked face.

"Hush," she says, quietly. "Hush, now."

"But my baby." She is sobbing, now. "Where is my baby?"

Sophie glances back over her shoulder. Charles stands rooted in place, his hands clenching and opening again, beside the doctor.

"Who are you?" the doctor asks indignantly. His eyes slide over with familiar disdain.

She ignores him and turns to Charles. "This is cruel. She needs her baby, not only for her mind, but for her body."

"Her body?" Charles asks dumbly.

Sophie flattens her hand across her own upper chest. "She needs to nurse," she says. "Or she will be in pain for hours, maybe days, until her milk dries up. And we should not let her milk dry up if we're to take her home."

"Take her home!" the doctor says. "I've told you, Mr. Wells, that I haven't the authority to release her to you—"

"Authority is coming," Charles says, his eyes still locked with Sophie's. Then he shifts his gaze to Helena, who has calmed, somewhat, with Sophie's hand on her shoulder. She has stopped thrashing but she continues to cry, desperately. She lifts her head and drops it against the metal, three times.

"Now, now," Sophie says, firm, businesslike. "Don't do that."

"Unbind her," Charles says to Sophie.

"Mr. Wells!" the doctor barks. "Absolutely not! This is for her own safety and the safety of everyone around her!"

Charles shouts something back but Sophie isn't listening, not now. Helena is sobbing again, pulling against the cuffs at her wrists and shoulders. Sophie leans in and presses her palm to Helena's flushed forehead.

"Look at me," she says, firmly. "Look at me and breathe."

Helena does.

\\\

Nurse Valerie has never felt so conflicted in all of her professional life.

Helena Wells is not healthy. She can see that.

But Nurse Valerie was in the room, in this very room, for the delivery, holding the young Miss Wells' hand as the midwife coaxed her through the birthing.

She saw the flare of life in her eyes when the baby finally emerged, saw the grin—the first true grin she has seen Miss Wells emit in months and months—when she heard the baby cry and watched the midwife swaddle her.

And she was there, holding young Helena's hand, when the midwife cradled the infant and took her out of the room, following the doctor's orders. She was there when Helena screamed for the first time, when her arms shot forward toward the closing door. And she was there when the guards came in, and strapped her down, and then when the doctor arrived.

"We must give her something," Nurse Valerie had said, "We can't let her suffer like this."

"Her body must heal first," the doctor said. "I know it's terrible. Tomorrow we can give her something. And the baby is fine, she's with the wet nurse. I've no idea where that boy Charles has buggered off to—excuse me—but I hope he'll be here soon, or the baby will have to go to the poorhouse."

Helena has been struggling, screaming, crying ever since, for hours on end, now.

Valerie feels her fingernails dig into her own palms. This woman, this tall, stern-seeming negro woman, is soothing Helena more than she, herself, has managed to do in the year since Helena was admitted.

Nurse Valerie makes a decision that may see her sacked. But she is an aging woman, a mother whose children have children, and perhaps she has dulled her heart for too long.

The doctor is arguing with Mr. Wells. She pushes past both of them, out the door.

\\\

Sophie sees the red in the room dulling, turning more brown, as Miss Wells' sobs dull and turn to hiccups. When her eyes are open, she stares unabashedly into Sophie's, but more and more they close and she lies back as grief overtakes the rage.

The men are still arguing.

"I am a professional, Mr. Wells, and I know what's best for my patients!"

"I am her_ brother_, Dr. Austin, and while my sister may be peculiar, _I know what she needs now_!"

The door opens and closes and a baby cries, louder than the argument. Helena's eyes fly open and she tries to sit up before the restraints snap her back down. Sophie's head spins around. And it's that nurse, the one who just left, cradling a swaddled pink newborn with a thatch of black hair on its brow.

"Christina!" Helena cries, and she's tugging on her restraints again, deep red blazing around her in all direction.

Sophie awaits no instructions; she finds the buckle on the wrist cuff and begins to tug at it. She looks up and Charles is doing the same with the other wrist.

"Nurse Valerie!" Dr. Austin is saying, "remove that child at once!"

"No, Dr. Austin, I'm afraid I will not, today," she says. The baby is crying and Helena is crying and when her wrists are free Helena, herself, unfastens the buckle at her shoulders while Charles unbinds her hips. Helena jolts upright and both hands begin to tug at the buttons at the back of her neck. Sophie helps her, and when they're fully unfastened Helena tugs one arm out of the sleeve.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," the doctor says and turns his back just before Helena's breast is exposed. Charles wheels around too, blushing furiously.

The nurse settles the baby in Helena's outstretched arms and then steps back. Helena cradles her, offers her a nipple and when the baby latches on the groan of relief that bursts from Helena's throat borders on obscene. Sophie remembers that feeling, the sudden easing of hours of built-up pressure, and feels an empathetic twinge in her own chest.

"Here," she says, and she guides Helena's hands to properly support the baby's head and neck. "Like this."

Helena takes the guidance willingly, and once she's re-settled, she looks up into Sophie's eyes for reassurance. Sophie nods.

"My Christina," Helena murmurs, smiling down again. The red of her aura has dulled to flashes, now, surrounded by a pale, soothing mauve. "Isn't she perfect?"

"She is," Sophie says.

The nurse steps closer again. "Shall we ease things for the gentlemen, then?" she says. She has unfastened her apron and holds it in her hands. Sophie steps back and Helena doesn't resist as the nurse drapes the apron over her shoulder, covering the baby and all of Helena's exposed skin. "There," she says.

"Well, Mr. Wells, what's your intent now?" the doctor asks, turning around. He cleans his spectacles ostentatiously against the front of his shirt.

"Helena is to be released into my custody—" he holds his hand up as the doctor opens his mouth to object—"pending the legal documentation still being processed. I understand that you cannot release her until the documents arrive, but we need to make sure Helena continues to have access to the baby for nursing and, eh, other such motherly… things."

"And how do you propose we manage that?" the doctor asks. "We haven't the facilities to keep a baby here."

"I can take her," Sophie says, stepping forward. "My sister lives less than a mile from here. She owns a laundry. Christina and I can stay with her for a few nights, and I'll bring her back here during the day to spend time with her mother." She looks down at Helena, now, who has shifted the baby to the other side and is gazing up at her with wide doe eyes. "Does that suit you?" Sophie asks.

Helena nods.

Charles clasps his hands together. "It's settled, then."

Sophie nods.

She's quite sure Irene won't mind the company for a few days.

\\\

"Christina?" Charles says to Helena, a week later, once they're settled into the new townhome. "That's a name with a weighted history in your life, isn't it?"

He's standing in the doorway. He's come to tell her that he's venturing out for the afternoon; he's met a lovely woman who's agreed to join him for a walk in Regent's Park. The question has lingered at the back of his mind for some time, though, and has chosen this moment to emerge of its own volition.

Helena has just finished feeding the baby and is patting her back against her shoulder. She is pacing leisurely circles in front of the window in her bedroom. The sky is grey through the window, giving the room a silvery, opaque glow; she passes in and out of shadow as she walks.

Helena shrugs. "I wanted to name her for someone I loved," she says. She stops walking, her face only half in darkness, and meets his eyes. "Charlotte was my first idea. But I thought it would be more polite to let you keep the variants of your name for your own children, don't you agree?"

Someone less familiar with her inflections of speech might mistake her comment for a throw-away, but Charles is not among them. He hears what she's saying. Charles hadn't realized he'd wanted some appreciation, some acknowledgment of the work and emotion he's devoted to his sister over the last year, but in these words from Helena's mouth he hears all of it, all of the thanks and the love an the respect he could ever ask of anyone.

(Over a decade later, just past a year after he has bid Helena farewell for the last time, he will name his first-born not Charles, for himself, but George, for her.)

* * *

Joe Willis flies to Moscow pretty often for business. He's looking forward to retiring in two or three years because, for one thing, he's too old to be spending this much time on a plane. So he appreciates a good seat-neighbor. He really does.

Like this young woman. Pretty, which is always nice. Skinny, which is probably good because he's not, so much, anymore, and these seats are narrow.

Soon as she sits down, she takes a folder out of her handbag and starts writing furiously on a legal pad. He looks over. He can't even read the letters.

"You writing in code, or something?"

She looks up at him with her eyes, her head still tipped forward, and then looks back down and keeps writing. "Hardly. It's Imperial Aramaic," she says.

"Oh. That's pretty neat. You a professor or something?"

She keeps writing. "Yes," she says.

Joe settles back in his chair. "My son wants to go back to school to get his Ph.D. in Ancient History," he says. "I told him he's too old to live on grad student pay."

She pauses at that, her pen hovering over the paper. She looks up at him. Her pupils are dark, but her eyes are bright; they're wide, like she's worked up about something. "What do you know about, er, 'grad student' pay?"

He puts his hands up defensively. "Hey, no offense. I don't know much, really. I mean, my daughter studies anthropology and it always seems to me like she'll take any work she's offered no matter how little the paycheck. She says that's just what's expected. It seems like a bit of a racket to me, to be honest. No offense."

She blinks at him once. Twice. Then looks back down and continues writing. "None taken," she says. "It's infuriating, the things some people must do to make ends meet in this day and age."

There's a tension to her voice, and even Joe can tell there's something bigger there she's talking about, but something about the way she says it is sort of… slimy. He doesn't want to ask.

She puts her stuff away when the announcement comes on that she should, to get ready for takeoff. When the plane pushes back from the gate he sees her wrap her fingers tight around the armrests.

"Nervous flyer?" he asks, with a chuckle.

"I suppose," she says. "It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that something of this size with no visible moving parts should be able to stay aloft."

"Yeah, I hear ya. I try not to think about it much. The more you fly, the easier it gets," he says.

She leans back against the seat and closes her eyes as the plane accelerates up the runway. "Well," she grits out, "I hope not to have to do it too many more times."

When they are aloft, she pulls out her pad and paper and keeps writing. The evening meal comes and goes, and then Joe tilts his chair back and puts on a sleep mask. "Don't be afraid to wake me if you need to get up for the restroom," he says.

She nods, still writing.

He dozes off eventually and wakes up about an hour before landing. She's still writing.

"Wow, did you ever take a break?" he asks.

"No," she says.

"Must be a big project," he says. "Got something big going on in Russia?"

"No," she says, her pen still moving at a frenetic pace. When she looks up her eyes are owl-like, red-rimmed, like she didn't even stop working to blink, let alone sleep. "My opportunity is in America, but being well-prepared in Russia will be essential to its success."

Joe chuckles. "I hope it doesn't involve too much flying for you."

She smiles. "No, I don't suspect it will."

\\\

As if Pete didn't have enough reasons to dislike H.G. Wells already, seriously.

Every time she shows up, he gets vibes up, down, sideways and backward. They might be the weirdest damn vibes he's ever had, and that's saying something, with the kind of vibes he gets working at the Warehouse. And it's annoying, really damn annoying, that he has no idea what they mean. It's like, he'll get halfway through a bad vibe and it'll turn happy. Or halfway through a sad vibe and it'll turn scary. When she's around he feels like he's a radio right on the edge between, like, a top-40 radio station and one of those fire-and-brimstone religious stations, so he's hearing angry shouting over thumpa-thumpa dance-pop beats, and he wishes _somebody_ would just nudge the knob one way or the other so he could hear something _clearly_.

And then you put Myka in the mix and things get even weirder, because on top of feeling these mashed-potato vibes he's got to deal with the fact that _of course_ the _freaking time travelling murderer genius_ is the first person he's met who apparently operates on the same wavelength as Myka does.

He is not thrilled—he is _really_ not thrilled—to learn that Myka's been letting H.G. stalk her for days and hasn't said anything to him.

And he knows they worked together in California for a bit but there's more going on than that. There is. There has to be, for them to be this… clicky.

Every time H.G. looks at Myka, he gets the weirdest vibes, like he's swimming in the ocean and there's something slimy around his ankle is trying to pull him under, but at the same time he can see the blue sky and the sparkling water and it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

\\\

In the taxi, Pete sits in front with the driver while Myka and H.G. sit in the back with the transmitter. H.G. holds it, periodically tweaking a knob to keep the signal strong, and Myka relays her instructions to the driver in Russian.

On a long, straight, stretch of road, Myka leans closer and asks, quietly: "Who OD'd?"

H.G. waits a beat before answering. "A young woman I met," she says. Her eyes flit up to Myka's and she forces a tight-lipped smile, and says, "she was pregnant." Her voice resonates in the low frequencies, something sinister.

Myka opens her mouth to respond but is cut off by the transmitter beeping at them.

"Left! Left!" H.G. shouts, and Myka relays the message to the driver who hauls hard on the wheel to avoid missing the corner. Centrifugal force tosses an unprepared H.G. practically into Myka's lap and their foreheads clonk together.

As the car straightens out, H.G. pushes back across the seat and when Myka looks over at her they're both clutching their foreheads.

"That was not ideal," Myka says.

"No, it wasn't," H.G. says, and chuckles, and the hint of darkness is gone.

From the front seat, Pete says, "This is ridiculous," and Myka can practically hear him rolling his eyes.

\\\

For several minutes after they find Artie safe it's all Pete can do to catch his breath, leaning against one of the wooden beams. Myka is sitting on the floor her back against the other one, and even old Papa Bear is looking kind of adrift, standing in the middle of the empty space.

Ivan is on the floor, still passed out; Myka cuffed his wrists behind his back and Pete used his belt to tie his ankles, too, just to be safe.

On the floor beyond him, H.G. is curled up, shivering, and the sight of a grown woman tucked in the fetal position on a concrete floor is pathetic enough but the fact that she's clutching a piece of driftwood like it's a teddy bear makes him wish he had a _real_ teddy bear to give her.

Pete thinks of his dad, who would probably tell him to be a gentleman, go over there and offer the lady your jacket. But he sees her glancing back over her shoulder, at Artie, and the vibe is so thick and dark he can't bring himself to move toward it.

But Myka doesn't feel vibes. And maybe that's a good thing, right now, because H.G. might be creepy and a killer but she still saved Artie's life. And now Myka's making H.G. sit up, and she's shrugging out of her own jacket and wrapping it around H.G.'s shoulders like the gentleman Pete couldn't quite bring himself to be.

"You okay?" Myka asks.

H.G. nods. She's tense, but no longer shivering. "It's wearing off," she says. Then she cocks an eyebrow. "What on earth was this 'Titanic,' anyway?"

Myka laughs quietly. "That's a really depressing story for some other day," she says.

H.G. smiles up at her and for a moment, just a moment, the racket of vibes in Pete's head quiets down to one, and it's big and fluffy and sweet, like cotton candy.

"All right," Artie grouses, walking toward them. He glares down at H.G. "I'm going to need that back.

"Artie!" Myka protests, and she opens her mouth to say more but H.G. stops her with a hand on her arm.

"What then?" H.G. says to Artie. She manages, somehow, to look like she's looking _down_ at him, even though she's sitting on the floor and he's standing above her.

Artie's eyes narrow. "What do you want, then?"

"I would prefer not to be imprisoned again."

Artie grunts. On the floor beside him, Ivan begins to stir.

"Warehouse security teams are already on their way," Artie says. "You should go now."

H.G. nods. She stands slowly and hands the driftwood to Artie, and then shrugs off the coat and turns to hand it to Myka, behind her.

The vibes, all of them, are dulling now.

"Thank you," H.G. says.

"Thank _you_," Myka says, with her small, Myka-esque smile.

H.G. nods once at Artie, and once at Pete. Pete nods back. And then she heads for the stairs.

\\\

Only Artie knows that Regent security will have tracked Pete and Myka's movements and are already outside the building.

Only Artie knows that H.G. will be caught as soon as she steps out the door.

He doesn't trust her. Not even a little. But she did right by him, so maybe, he thinks, maybe she deserves a shot to go and make a life for herself in this new era. Maybe she deserves to be free of the Warehouse. But only the Regents can make that decision.

So he's sped up the process for her.

\\\

As Pete hauls a still-dazed Ivan to his feet, he feels a vibe. A dark one, coming from H.G., somewhere beyond.

"I—I think something's happened to her," he says.

"To H.G.?" Myka says, her hand going for her Tesla.

"You have a job to do, children, and she is not it," Artie barks.

"But she's—"

"_Artifacts_, Myka. Bag them. Please."

Myka looks at Pete. Pete shrugs. And then Myka looks down, clearly uncomfortable, but in true Myka fashion, she follows the order she's given.

\\\

It's ironic that Phillip Petrov was recruited to the Regency in part because of his military experience. He completed his mandatory service as a younger man, of course, and discovered he had talent for it, but he despises fighting and army tactics. Hates them.

And he knows that he's here, outside an abandoned factory in Moscow, because he's Russian, not because of his military background. He knows it's because he's the one who will know how to move H.G. Wells from Moscow back to America for evaluation.

But he's still standing here, surrounded by these mercenaries in black carrying assault rifles, protected by the open, bulletproof door of one of their trucks. He's got a bullhorn in his hand and he knows what to do with it. He's got a team of men inside the building, prepared to catch her if she retreats upon sight of the barricade awaiting her.

The door opens. Her head pokes out and immediately retreats behind the door.

Petrov brings the bullhorn to his lips. "H.G. Wells, you are surrounded. Please come out with your hands above your head, and you will not be hurt."

He waits a second. Five more. Five more again. She doesn't emerge. He lifts the bullhorn again, opens his mouth to speak, but then—

the door opens and she steps out, hands up—and she's got a handgun in one of them, pointed toward the sky.

The mercenaries around him immediately cock their rifles and level them into firing pose.

"Hold your fire," he says. Then, through the bullhorn: "Kneel down, Miss Wells."

She does.

"Set the gun on the ground and slide it toward me."

The hand holding the gun begins to lower, slowly, but at the last second, before she can toss it away, he sees her grip tighten and she turns it on herself, presses it under her jaw.

"Now, Miss Wells. Don't do anything rash."

"You know in my day, the Warehouse was an honest establishment," she says.

"We still are, Miss Wells."

"It doesn't feel that way from where I'm kneeling." She glances slightly back, at the door from which she emerged. At the people still inside.

"Come, Miss Wells. The Regents wish only to converse with you."

Her eyes fix on him, steely. "I will not return to the bronze. I will not."

"Miss Wells—"

"Promise me I shall not be returned to the bronze, and I'll come with you."

"I cannot promise that."

She cocks the gun.

"Please, Miss Wells, don't do anything rash."

"What is your name, young man?"

And he can't help but chuckle a little because she is, of course, older than him, by some measures, despite her young face.

"Petrov," he says. "Regent Petrov."

"Well, Regent Petrov. When you have spent a century in static sensory deprivation, perhaps you will earn the right to make claims about what is or is not rash behavior."

Petrov swallows. During his time in the military, he was put forward as a candidate for a high-level infiltration team. As part of his training, he was made to withstand various types of torture. He experienced sensory deprivation for forty-eight hours. Then he opted out of the program.

"The alternatives to bronzing are far more severe. And permanent," he says.

She rolls her eyes at him. Actually rolls her eyes. "Death?" she scoffs, "With all due respect, I'm holding a pistol beneath my chin, and I am not afraid to use it. I would choose death over bronzing."

Petrov says, "If it comes to it, I'll be sure you're given that option. Now, please, set down the gun."

She glares at him and then closes her eyes, thinking. Her nostrils are flared and her breath comes in fast pants.

Petrov turns to the captain beside him. "Have them put down their arms," he says.

"But sir—"

"Do it."

The captain shouts the order and the muzzles of a dozen rifles drop almost simultaneously.

"Agent Bering would be disappointed if you made the wrong decision today," Petrov says. "I hear she has made overtures for friendship?"

Her eyes open at that. They scan the ring of mercenaries, then rest on him, unblinking.

"I have your word on the bronze?" she says loudly.

He nods. "Death over bronzing. You have my word."

Slowly, she pulls the gun from her jaw and resets the hammer and the safety. She sets it on the ground and slides it gently outside of her own reach.

Almost immediately three armed men descend on her. They grasp her wrists and cuff her hands behind her back.

"Easy," Petrov calls.

He watches as they bundle her into the back of a Humvee, and then he walks down the block and climbs behind the wheel of his sports car. Behind the mirrored windows, he pulls up his sleeves and inspects the integrity of the Remati shackle, as has become his habit. It changes temperatures, he's discovered, depending on the mood and condition of the Warehouse. Right now it's hot; not hot enough to burn, but warm enough to be uncomfortable. He wonders, not for the first time, what the temperature means, but Irene has asked him to stop calling every time the shackle feels a little unusual.

"If the Warehouse is in danger, the shackle will let you know unmistakably," she'd said. "Otherwise, please, don't trouble yourself. Or me."

He tugs his sleeve under the shackle, a barrier between the warmth and his skin, before starting the car and driving away.

\\\

Artie is relieved that when he emerges from the factory with Pete, Myka, and a subdued Ivan, any scene that may have happened with H.G. Wells has apparently dispersed. There are two armored SUVs waiting for them, armed guards standing by their passenger doors.

They toss Ivan into one. He'll be handled by the local authorities until Petrov, the Russian Regent, can negotiate something with the higher-ups.

Artie, Pete, and Myka climb into the other car, which takes them back to their hotel and, once their bags are packed, on to the airport.

\\\

As soon as the plane reaches altitude, Myka's got her laptop out, Word doc open, and she's typing.

"Mykes," Pete says, "we've just completed the most epic snag-and-bag of our warehouse careers. Don't you think you can take a break?"

"They're going to get her," Myka says. "Artie, the regents… it's a witch-hunt and it's not fair."

Pete sighs. "What does that have to do with you?"

"I'm writing a report. She deserves a shot, Pete." She pauses and looks over at him. "Don't you think?"

Pete shrugs. "A shot at what, exactly?"

She turns back to her screen and sighs. "I don't know. At the very least, a shot at not being bronzed again."

"I guess I don't know if she does," Pete says, "But I don't know that she doesn't, either." But Myka is typing away again, and he can't even tell if she was listening.

He shrugs and bends over to pull his headphones out of his bag, because the in-flight entertainment's about to start and the universe must love him because they're showing _The Hangover_.


End file.
